A EuroTrip I'll Never Forget
by MegaSilver
Summary: Tommy and Katherine are married and living in London, but things aren't going so hot. Kimberly visits the city and crosses their paths, and things only go downhill from there. Can everything be salvaged... or will vengeance destroy everyone? Third installment in my series "Tragedies and Triumphs."
1. Prologue

**_Disclaimer:_**_ Saban owns Power Rangers_ and all relevant characters. Mika Häkkinen is a cameo reference; this is not actorfic. Any fictional elements/persons not canon to the Power Rangers_ Unvierse are my own creations and belong to me. Use them only with my permission, please. This story is purely non-profit and is not to be sold.___

_**A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget  
><strong>_Prologue  
><strong>by MegaSilver<strong>

As soon as the flash went off, Tommy Oliver shook hands with the man who had just posed with him and his wife. "Thanks so much, Mr. Häkkinen!" he exclaimed graciously as his wife recovered the Polaroid camera from their casual photographer.

"Oh, you're welcome!" assured Mika Häkkinen, the winner of the Formula One race they had watched that day.

"Okay!" exclaimed Katherine Oliver as she trotted back over to the pair with her camera and the photo. "It came out perfect."

As Mika signed the photo, Tommy couldn't help but notice the near perfect coordination before him: Katherine and Mika had exactly the same eye, skin and hair color.

_Perhaps she has some Finnish ancestry she hasn't told me about_, he thought. _Whatever. He'd better be gentlemanly enough to only treat her like a sister at the cocktail party tonight._ Tommy chuckled off the thought. Katherine Oliver, née Katherine Hillard, his wife, his most altruistic admirer. And he, her husband, a fourth-degree black belt. How could he let himself worry about anyone hitting on her?

"Well, good luck to you and your uncle," bade Mika. "Oh! I forgot. I'll see you at the cocktail tonight!"

"Bye!" called the Olivers.

* * *

><p>Tommy and Katherine soaked up the fresh Mediterranean air and sun near the harbor at the foot of the Monaco circuit. The weather was nice and mild, not too cloudy, not so warm as to make one really want to sprawl out on the beaches nearby, but quite fitting for a late mid-May afternoon in southern central Europe.<p>

"So, Tommy," said Katherine, "what do you think?"

"Hmm?" Tommy looked up abruptly, a bit startled.

"I mean, the race? Does it…" Katherine swallowed. She looked like she felt a bit guilty for what she had brought up.

"Does it what?" Tommy thought he might know what it was.

Katherine blinked. "Never mind."

"No, tell me."

"Does it… make you wish you could be in there racing?" Katherine grimaced.

Tommy sighed. _Yes, just as I'd thought._ "I don't know. Kind of. A little." He took a deep breath. "But if I had to choose, watch the Grand Prix with Katherine Hillard-turned-Mrs. Oliver or race in the Grand Prix and…" He hesitated. Now he was the one being insensitive. Katherine was his _wife_. How could he even bring up a hypothetical situation without her there beside him?

"Aww man, Kat, I'm just happy I could be here with you." Tommy placed an arm around Katherine and pulled her close. And he spoke the truth. He wouldn't _let_ himself regret this choice: it was what they had wanted, what he had wanted.

Katherine hadn't asked him to come to England with her. She had only asked him what he would think if she were away for a while.

That fateful day in August 1997, Tommy had uttered the words to a promise he could never keep: "_I'll wait for you._"

"_I'll come back to you_," Katherine had promised back.

They had made it a point to say so, as though they were both afraid that not to say it would have meant a sure end. Indeed, history suggested such fears were well grounded. When Kimberly had gone off to Florida, Tommy had never even discussed with her what the long distance might mean to their relationship. They had only promised to talk on the phone twice a week.

Both Tommy and Kimberly had changed so much, matured so much, together, as Power Rangers. But they had overlooked commitment to one another and just taken it for granted, as though their commitment to the Power Rangers were enough. They had never even thought about life together _without_ the Power. Of course, once Tommy was still a Ranger and Kimberly no longer was, with the two of them a whole continent apart, everything was thrown up in the air.

At least, that was the only plausible explanation Tommy would allow for why Kimberly would ever have let herself fall for another man.

But he wasn't going to let that happen again. He knew Katherine genuinely admired him and always had. Suddenly, with Kimberly out of his life, he'd felt so vulnerable and alone as team leader. He hadn't known how he would fare. But Katherine had been there beside him, more than he could ever have imagined she could be… and then Jason had come back. Katherine and then Katherine and Jason had really made his duties manageable those difficult months.

He couldn't let that go. Kimberly had been so special to him and he'd lost her. Katherine was so precious now, and he'd known he could never find another like her.

So he had promised to wait. He had waited after she left in mid-October. He had spent two torturous months waiting until Katherine had come back to Angel Grove for Christmas.

And when he'd seen her off at the airport just a few swift days later, he could bear the thought of her parting again no longer. Right there in the terminal he'd proposed to her. He'd already bought the ring, even. Katherine had been totally shocked.

"_I bought it to remind myself to wait," he told her as she admired the elegant yet unpretentious octagonally-cut diamond set in the purest gold fit for jewellery. "But I can't wait any longer, Kat."_

"_Tommy, I—what will we do if we—"_

"_Kat." Tommy cupped his hand and brushed back a strand of his girlfriend's hair. "I want to go to England with you. I know I can't today, but I want to go there as soon as I can and stay with you. Forever."_

"_But… but, your uncle! The racing track. You've been talking about going professional and—"_

"_It doesn't matter!" Tommy breathed. "Kat, in just a few minutes you'll be going back out of the country. Jason's moving to Texas in two months. And me… I know I have my uncle and David and my family and my other cousins down in L.A. county, but… you and Jase, you got me through so much stuff they can't understand. And Jase was just barely getting me through two months without you. Now another four months without you… Kat, no. There was a time in my life I could have done anything alone; I did my Karate alone from the time I was six up until I met Jason in 1993. But now I know what it's like to have people in my life and if I have to do this Formula One thing alone, I just don't want it. My family's past and present. My future…"_

_Tommy trailed off, seeing the tears well up in his girlfriend's eyes. "Tommy…" Katherine said slowly. "Whenever I was in danger you always came right by my side. Sometimes I have to walk home at night in London and when I see what's going on around me I think that in a moment I'm going to be in danger all over again. And I imagine, what will I do? and I think, immediately, I'll cry for you, but you won't come… because… you can't." She sniffed. "I'm trying to be strong; I'm trying to be brave."_

"_You are, Kat! Kat, look at me. I'm trying. If I can't be strong alone I don't want to make you do it."_

"_I don't want you to give up your dream, Tommy…"_

"_Katherine, every since I became a Ranger I've only had one dream, and it's to be with the people I love."_

"… _but I want you to be there with me… if you want."_

"_So, Katherine, what do you say, then? Will you marry me?"_

"_Yes!"_

There was nothing else he could have done. Of course, attending the Monaco Grand Prix now only served as a stark reminder that Katherine was living out her dream and Tommy had given up one. He reminded himself that the Formula One wasn't that important of a dream, anyway.

That wasn't what really bothered Tommy, though. Actually, he wasn't really bothered at all. Not right now. But in a few days, their nice little holiday would be up, Tommy would be back at work at the martial arts studio where he taught in East End London and just a couple of days later Katherine would be off for a two-day performance in Scotland.

Now, in his arms, Katherine piped up. "Have you ever thought about going back to it?"

"Hmm?" Tommy had been so deep in his thoughts that it no longer registered what exactly Katherine was referring to by "it."

"I mean, racing. You know… you could spend some time out on the tracks in Outer London… if…"

"Aww, man." Tommy sighed again. "It'd be nice, I guess, but… if I spent that much time out there I wouldn't have much time to teach classes… then I'd be spending a ton of money with none coming in, I'd have to see if Dad or Uncle John could help us and…" He trailed off.

Katherine sighed herself. "You're right."

"Plus, if… we want children before…"

"We will, Tommy," said Katherine, but her tone and her expression suggested she was a bit anxious herself.

They were only twenty years old. Why should there be any worry?

Still, they had been living this way in London for a year. Katherine had successfully completed her first professional audition just a month ago, but the wages were certainly not what they were for movie stars and standard maternity leave policy for performers in her company was not particularly generous and it would be some time before she could get the clout to negotiate for a decent package. The way they were going, Tommy couldn't see the means for larger accommodations coming anytime soon in terms of raises or promotions, certainly not given the meager amount they were saving. Tommy knew he ought to think about setting up his own Karate studio, but that took time and would be expensive—certainly more so in London than it would have been in Angel Grove. Plus, they didn't have family or close friends nearby to count on for support and help throughout the wonderful adventure of raising children.

So, one year of marriage had gone by and they just didn't see themselves as having advanced that far at all down the road to having children. How was it, Tommy wondered, that they were using all the consumer products one would expect to need for a successful family planning scheme… and yet he felt as though they had no control over the planning of any it all?

But he didn't want to think about that right now. Right now, he was here with Katherine, the woman he loved, thanks to his Uncle John, who loved them and who had arranged for them not only to be able to stay in central Monaco during the 1999 Grand Prix and watch a sport that Tommy loved but also to get admitted to all sorts of flashy backstage events.

Such as the celebratory riders' cocktail party tonight. Tommy checked his watch, knocked lightly on his wife's head, and smiled. "Hey, Duchess," he said, using his pet name for Katherine—she always seemed to him so elegant and aristocratic in her grand, graceful poises. "Want to head back and get ready for the party?"

* * *

><p>Kimberly arrived at the Saint Lawrence Gymnastics Center at exactly 6:58 AM on Monday, 7 July 1999 and promptly sat down in one of the rubbery chairs outside her coach Gunthar Schmidt's office. Coach Schmidt, for his part, arrived exactly two minutes later—right on time for their meeting, as always. They greeted each other warmly and marched straight into his office.<p>

"I was quite proud of you last week," remarked Coach Schmidt as soon as they were seated. "All of you girls performed very well in Guadalajara—and without you, we could never have won the bronze medal in the team competition."

Kimberly smiled, a little embarrassed. However, what Coach Schmidt said was not false: she was the only girl on the team to have medalled in an individual event at the Pan Global Games in Mexico: she had won silver on the beam. Her good friends Cindy McClintock and Marlene Cristiano had, unfortunately, not medalled: Marlene, in fact, had not made it to the finals. However, the three were happy that they had at least been able to go to the games all together.

All the same, she knew this round had been something of a disappointment for Coach Schmidt. In 1995, the U.S. had managed to bring home at least two gold medals from the Pan Global Games—a decent showing, though not quite as impressive as the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics record since the fall of the Iron Curtain. In fact, the Eastern Europeans still had a pretty noticeable upper hand at the Pan Globals.

Coach Schmidt, for his part, was East German and had competed in the 1964 and 1968 East Germany Olympics team, netting two silvers and one gold. He had emigrated to the U.S. in 1991, dreaming of sending to the American Olympic Gymnastics team athletes with the sort of legendary grace and poise that had earned Soviet and other Eastern Bloc gymnasts under Communism the epithet "beautiful"—and in this way, continue the glorious legacy of his compatriots and citizens of his neighboring countries.

Indeed, throughout these past three years, Kimberly had been amazed how much, some days, her training with Coach Schmidt had seemed to consist almost as much of ballet and theatre as of gymnastics skills, strength and flex.

It had seemed especially odd in view of his otherwise matter-of-fact, no-frills personality, which he now projected as he looked Kimberly straight in the eye. "I kept it a secret, but Larissa Rustakov was there for all our games."

Kimberly's jaw went slack. Quickly she regained composure and snapped it shut. "Larissa—I'm guessing you mean… _the_ Larissa Rustakov?" Larissa Rustakov, Ukranian legend: thrice Soviet Olympic gold medallist; twice Olympic silver medallist, once Olympic bronze medalist.

"Yes. I first met her back in 1968; that was my last Olympics and her first. She received permission to retire from competition after the 1980 games and kept a low profile thereafter. She coached children's gymnastics in Kiev until late last year, when she was invited to begin working for the U.S. Gymnastics National Team Center in Huntsville, Texas. Not many people are aware, but she'll be back in the international spotlight very soon.

"She spoke… very favorably of you, in particular, Kimberly. She said there were few Americans who could execute the synthesis of artistic and physical techniques as you had, and she was sure that with proper rigorous training you could easily qualify for the finals in Sydney 2000—if not medal."

Kimberly covered her mouth. This was exactly what she had been hoping would happen for so many years. Now it was really happening…

"They want to receive you in Texas as soon as possible to make arrangements. But you need to know it is a very different world. Larissa did the same sort of dance-gymnastics we've done with you here and she likes that, but she works for the American Olympic Committee now and she'll be following their program—more mechanical, more technical. And you'll be even more cloistered there than you have been here.

"I know it is a change, but we knew it might come."

Yes, they had talked about that possibility back in 1996. But the thing was, Kimberly hadn't _thought_ about it since then. All her energy she'd been focusing into the Pan Global Games, into her technique, being the best she could be and thinking about where she'd end up in terms of what she would be physically able to execute on the floor, vault, beams or bars… not thinking about consequentially _where_ she would end up in general as a result.

How could she have? After all, she had come to Florida to train for gymnastics and suddenly a new life had opened itself to her right there: a very adventurous and attentive boyfriend, Brendan O'Driscoll, and some very dear new friends. She was really busy in gymnastics, but the moments she had outside gymnastics, her life appeared pretty well made. The whole rest of the world hadn't really factored in…

Coach Schmidt seemed to read her mind. "A lot will change, even here, you know. Most of the girls your age and older won't continue. Maybe one or two, but it will be harder for them to go further. And if you stayed with me, I could help you get to the gold at the Pan Global Games in 2002, but if you want to go to the Olympics, you need to be close to them."

Kimberly took a deep breath. "It's all just so much all at once…"

"I know. And… I know you got a scholarship to Florida Atlantic University for this fall. There is more than one way for you to move forward. If you continue with gymnastics, you will be someone great. Maybe not as _recognized_ as great gymnasts were in Eastern Europe in their time, but certainly great to all those who understand what this sport is about—and to your country, as well, should you win. There is something to be said for greatness all by itself. And you may get an even better scholarship elsewhere: USC, for example; Stanford, Ivy Leagues, even…"

Kimberly's eyes went wide. USC? Los Angeles? Right back near Angel Grove? No way. She couldn't. No way she could turn things back that way. But… Harvard? Princeton?

_He's got to be joking. What would _I_ be doing at Harvard?_

"Listen: I know you sacrificed everything you knew in California to come here. But you sacrificed it for gymnastics, not for Florida. Life changes all the time, everywhere, and it will change here, as well. Your life may change in many ways, in many different places. Or, you can put your roots down here, or anywhere else, starting now. It is up to you. I understand next week you're leaving to see your mother in Paris. Take your holiday, relax, celebrate your medals with your family and make a decision when you come back."

Kimberly nodded. "You're right."

"I won't lie: I think you should go to Texas. But that's speaking as a gymnast. I know you quite well, Kimberly, but I've always had the feeling there was a bit more to you that you didn't really show, and I could never figure out whether it was gymnastics or something else. Perhaps that will be the deciding factor for you. Whatever it is, it will be your decision. I will understand, and I will not think any less of you for it. But you should know that if you quit now, you may not be able to come back."

"Right." Kimberly stood up. "Lot of thinking to do."

"Are you practicing today?"

"Of course!" Kimberly grinned. "I'm not leaving for four days and it's kind of hot to go outside; might as well, huh? Besides… if I _do_ end up going to Texas I'll need to have put in as many hours as I can."

Coach Schmidt smiled. "I know you will make a most _excellent_ Olympian, Kimberly."

* * *

><p>The tiny rental car ground to a sudden halt on the winding country road as a farmer led his heard of cattle from one green patch to the other across the strip of grey, unyielding pavement that dared to cut through the beautiful emerald landscape. Not that the land was any less relentless: bogs, hills and other obstacles did their best to ensure that the modernizer would have it as rough as possible. Even so, it was a beautiful place, and Kimberly Hart could not keep her eyes off it.<p>

"Shite," she heard her boyfriend mutter under his breath. Brendan was not the type to swear with the frequency of most of his compatriots—or at least that was the façade he presented to his American girlfriend. She supposed she should excuse him for feeling a little bit more at home—they _were_ in Ireland, after all, in his fatherland.

Kimberly finished surveying this frame of the country and averted her eyes to Brendan. "I swear I've seen five cows at least every thousand feet."

"Staple of this country, they are," Brendan explained, nodding. "And ye, the Yanks, the breadbasket of the world. Youse make the bread. We make the butter."

Slapping her forehead, Kimberly began chucking. "Oh, my gosh, just, like, smile and say 'cheese'!" She lightly pinched his abdomen.

He jerked, obviously tickled, but then stared at her with a mischievous smile as the last cow crossed the road. "You said, 'cheese.'"

"So?"

"So, that's a dairy product."

That was too much. Kimberly rolled her eyes and swatted his arm as the car began to lurch forward. "Too late to jump out."

"You wouldn't!" Brendan taunted.

Of course he was right, but she wouldn't say so. She had to tease him a bit more. "What's gotten into you? Most days I actually laugh at your sense of humor."

"Kim, all you've got to do's hear me talk and you laugh," Brendan corrected.

"That's not true!" Kimberly protested, barely holding back a chuckle. "Okay, so sometimes you make a turn of phrase that I don't know happens to be perfectly natural to you and so I _think_ I'm laughing with you. But I've gotten a lot better. Besides… you've got a cute accent."

"Ach, come on. All you like me for's me accent." Brendan was obviously trying to joke—or "slag," as he would say—but he was obviously touched and his pale cheeks flushing quite a bit at that remark, as though he were uncomfortable with the compliment.

After two and a half years together, he was still blushing at Kimberly's compliments! But it was true that, for an item of their longevity, they didn't exactly see each other very often.

Or maybe that _was_ the key to their longevity. They were, after all, still so young. They had met in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida during Kimberly's senior year of high school—she a competitive gymnast, he an immigrant bartender a few years older and taking a few community college classes.

Both of them were energetic and determined in ways that seemed to complement each other well, but their drive meant that, for the time being, their moments together were somewhat rarer than the typical young couple's, and this hadn't stopped following her senior year. Kimberly had begun taking community college courses as she had continued to train for gymnastics, and while she could count on plenty of monetary support from her father and grandparents, Brendan was on his own and continued to work mostly nights and weekends as a managing bartender at O'Brien's Pub. Finally, last summer as well as the previous one, Kimberly's mother had guilt-tripped her into staying in or near Paris for at least six weeks. Kimberly had only gotten out of a long visit this summer as a special grace thanks to the enormous pressure and exhaustion from her Pan Global competition

This had gone on for two and a half years, and the relationship somehow stayed alive, always set down rather than set aside. Still, Kimberly couldn't help but feeling that she missed out, or that things were progressing more slowly than they ought. Especially right now. She had only mentioned the Texas thing once in passing before they'd left Florida, and now they'd just landed at Shannon Airport and were only fifteen minutes away from the castle. There was no way she could bring it up now.

She knew, of course, that there was a virtue to taking things easy: it kept them well behaved, and it helped them to build things up before they actually started thinking about a life together, if they got to that stage. Brendan earned pretty decent money doing what he did and put it to pretty efficient use.

Plus, the relative rarity of their excursions made her cherish them all that much more—especially since Brendan always packed them with as much action as he could. How many other undergraduate pairs in America could say their quality time was a nice two-week excursion across northwestern Europe?

It sounded a bit more glamorous than it actually was. Before flying into Ireland, they'd stayed with Kimberly's family in France a week—and boy, had that been interesting, five people cooped up in a two-bedroom Parisian apartment near Montparnasse during the summertime. Of course they had spent their days out on the town and they had gone up to a bed and breakfast in Picardy over the weekend, but Kimberly had had the feeling her stepfather and her brother were glad to be rid of the extra warm bodies and have some space. In all honesty Kimberly had found the departure something of a relief herself. It wasn't that hot in Paris, at any rate certainly not as hot or as humid as it was in Florida, but without air conditioning it was just a tad rough in mid-July.

Moreover, Kimberly had the vague impression that Brendan was a mite uncomfortable about being a guest in the home of a divorced and remarried woman—and further, a Catholic who had remarried outside the Church without an annulment. Neither the devout Brendan nor Kimberly's observant grandparents had ever made a big deal out of the issue, but Kimberly had only really become conscious of the potential implications of her mother's marital status over the past year. Kimberly herself wasn't really a consistently practicing Catholic, though she did seem to find herself at Sunday Mass more and more often these days.

And now they were headed to a castle outside of Galway for Brendan's mother's family reunion, a place with lots of space and many, many devout Catholics. These respective qualities would make the situation more comfortable for respectively Kimberly and Brendan, Kimberly had to think.

Plus, with all the space, they could talk more about Texas, right?

One had to look on the bright side. They were young; they were on holiday; they were in Europe. This would definitely be a voyage never to forget.

**TO BE CONTINUED…**


	2. Dangerous Chain of Events

_**A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget  
><strong>_Part I: Dangerous Chains of Events  
><strong>by MegaSilver<strong>

_***ONE DAY EARLIER***_

In the land called Albion, on the north bank of the River Thames, a little above Regent's Park and right smack on the border between the Londonian boroughs of Camden and Westminster, Tommy dashed up a street and into a beautiful old Georgian residential building. Barely containing his excitement, he harried into the Olivers' flat to set the take-out bags down on the dining table, holding on only to the flowers.

"Kat?" he called.

"Tommy?" Katherine emerged from the bedroom, dressed for the outdoors and looking quite pleased. "I was afraid you wouldn't make it!" she exclaimed, kissing her husband.

"What do you mean?" asked Tommy, his smile flickering with nervousness.

"I… I wanted you to come see me off for my flight this evening," said Katherine.

_Her flight! Oh, no._

"Aww, man," sighed Tommy. In just a few hours, Katherine was to leave to Vienna for a series of weekend performances of Tchaikovsky's _Sleeping Beauty_ with her ballet company—and here he had brought home a luscious take-out dinner from the Ritz Hotel. "I completely forgot." He nodded towards the table. "I went to the Ritz and got dinner. But now…" He glanced down at his watch. It was too late.

Katherine was trying to console him with a smile. "Oh, Tommy. It's the thought that counts, you know."

Tommy nodded. "Yeah. Man, I was really hoping I could just—I mean…"

There was no need to say anything, though. For the last two months, since Katherine had begun actual professional ballet performances, it had been pulling teeth to find time together. Tommy hadn't made that many friends himself since they had moved: the owner and other major partner at the Karate studio where he taught were both married with kids and didn't really have time to socialize, while the other teachers were mostly sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. So they had relied largely on Katherine's classmates or colleagues to find people to go out with.

But now, Katherine was on stage many evenings and weekends and at least once a month travelled to continental Europe to perform. And on Saturday, Tommy had to supervise a major belt test at the Karate studio—the last one before summer holiday shifted into full gear—so it was out of the question to go with her.

And if it was the thought that touched the heart, the thought itself wouldn't cure real, physical loneliness.

Now, they both stood there, each maintaining an upright composure so as not to upset the other, although Tommy really wanted to pound his fist through the wall, and Katherine's eyes suggested she might start crying any minute.

She did not, however. "It's okay," she assured him. "It was really sweet of you, and you know I love you." She pulled him into a kiss. "It's only the weekend, and I _promise_ I'll do something special for you then."

Tommy hugged her tightly, staying silent for a few moments.

"Come on," said Katherine. "We'd better get to the airport."

The ride to Gatwick Airport was mostly silent, Tommy—and, he suspected, Katherine as well—too overwhelmed with frustration to know what to say that wouldn't make the other burst into tears. Perhaps it was just as well: the late sun spilt onto the Green Belt and made for a backdrop for private reflection. Tommy couldn't help but wonder what it might have been like to be called to the Ranger team here in England, fighting in this beautiful countryside. Would they have had difficulty concentrating against this sort of backdrop?

Or suppose the Power Rangers had been Europeans. Would they have defended Earth more gallantly? At one point Tommy would have answered in the negative. There just didn't seem to be the sort of love and fervor for homeland in Europe there was in the United States, at least not on the surface. Tommy rarely saw anyone waving the Union Jack here, whilst in many neighborhoods in the States one could scarcely round a block without seeing the Star-Spangled Banner on at least one porch.

As time went on, however, he began to get the feeling perhaps love for one's country meant something different here from what it meant back home. He wasn't sure why, but there was something about being British that just seemed so ingrained into every British person he met: certain cultural trappings and ceremonies but also even daily routines and lingo that this people was proud of and that, though not stamped with the label "MADE IN THE U.K.," seemed to demarcate this people pretty unmistakably.

_Suppose London were my city_, Tommy thought to himself. What would have been his reaction if one of Zedd's monsters had destroyed something like, say, Westminster Abbey?

_Not that it matters all that much_, Tommy realized as his thoughts gradually turned to the upcoming weekend.

_Another lonely weekend…_ just like the first weekend in June when Katherine had gone to Geneva. And Tommy lacked any guy friends around whom he could share some good old trash talking or politically incorrect rantings. No Jason, no Rocky, no Adam… not even Billy or Zack. He supposed he'd spend his lonely weekend walking around town and sightseeing when he wasn't in his class, just the way he had last month.

Besides, getting back to the cultural question, at the end of the day, Tommy _wasn't_ in fact British. On a good day Westminster Abbey brought out little sentiment in him beyond exotic fascination and perhaps a modest amount of cultural sympathy that he didn't quite understand well enough to articulate. Today, however, Tommy supposed he'd happen to walk past the Abbey at some point the way he had last month, that beautiful monument he had no one to share with. Today, Tommy supposed, with a logic that was only fuzzily rational, that he would loathe the Abbey and not care if he had to crush it with the Tigerzord to get rid of a monster.

_Well… Mega Tigerzord, rather… _In the surely impossible event that he'd have to fight today, Tommy wouldn't want to have to fight alone.

_But I probably would_, he thought. It wasn't like Tommy to be self-defeating but after struggling for a year, playing daily married life rough for two months and then encountering the disappointment he'd encountered today, he was definitely getting discouraged. Even turning to martial arts to let off steam didn't appeal to him right now: it was, after all, that blasted Saturday Karate test that prevented him from accompanying Katherine this weekend.

When he arrived back at the Swiss Cottage tube station two and a half hours later, Tommy made his way brusquely and decisively toward the building, accelerating as went; dashed into their flat; and punched that hole into the living room wall, right across from the nice Victorian dining table he'd offered Katherine for their wedding.

* * *

><p><em>***FRIDAY AFTERNOON***<em>

On the mirror opposite end of the island across the sea, Kimberly was finding out that "larger land mass and floor area" did not translate to "more space."

Although not all the family members had come came, the small town in Western Ireland in which Aidan and Catherine Quinn, the parents of Brendan's maternal grandfather, had reared their ten children had suddenly seen its population boom by nearly three hundred and fifty. It was a musical family: about a third of the adults were semi-struggling professional musicians or music teachers (semi-struggling because working in classical or else in traditional Irish folk—"Trad"—music). Another third were failed musicians having transitioned to various reasonable white- and blue-collar pursuits. It was also a fairly intelligent family: most of the remaining third of the adults was comprised of engineers, lawyers and architects. There was, in addition, one general practitioner doctor and one orthopedic surgeon. To round out the bunch, two of the young men were seminarians and wore cassocks, and there also was one ordained priest.

Kimberly had always had her own room and quite a bit of space to call her own. Even though her grandparents' house in Coral Springs, Florida was smaller than her mother's house in Angel Grove had been, it was plenty big for three people. Oh, she had heard her mother's tales about growing up in a big, loud French-Canadian-derived family in Maine, but those had all been stories to Kimberly and scarcely true to anything she actually saw: her mother was the youngest sibling, her grandfather had died when Kimberly was a baby and her grandmother had only moved to California in 1990, after she had slipped into Alzheimer's, so that Kimberly's mother and two aunts could look after her. Kimberly's childhood had more closely mirrored that of her father, himself an only child due to his parents' fertility difficulties.

Brendan, on the other hand, had grown up in a family of six children in a four-bedroom house. Space was simply not an issue for him, even in those cramped quarters in Paris. He seemed to take everything here in stride.

Kimberly, at least at first, was fascinated by the ambiance, the affability and the warm welcome she received. No one seemed to think it odd that Brendan would allow an outsider into the family gathering—but as Brendan took her around the reception room meeting relatives during the cocktail late in the evening, a fair few folk just couldn't hide their delight:

- "Well, Brendan, have you bought the stone, then have you?" asked one of his aunts.

- "Ah, and just five years from now, at the next reunion, there'll be two little O'Driscolls with German and French infusion and a third on the way, I can see!" remarked a great-aunt, a twinkle in her eye.

- "So, when's the wedding, Brendan?" asked a male second cousin about Brendan's age, looking Kimberly up and down. "Can I be _in_ the wedding? Can I be the groom, like?"

Kimberly's eyes went wide and she stepped backwards a moment. The guy in question was redheaded, skinny as a rail and sporting some rather patchy facial hair.

Brendan glared at his cousin and shoved the twerp backwards with the palm of his right hand, using his left to put an arm around Kimberly and pull her close to himself. "Piss off, lush head!" he growled. As he led Kimberly outside the living room and onto the lawn, he whispered, "Don't mind Frankie, there; I think he had a triple for the aperitif. Don't mind me aunt, me great aunt, me granddad or me ma's first cousin, either," he added, referring the people who had asked about marriage. "They just want people to… you know, make it and be happy; it's what they like to see."

"_Make it." "Be happy."_ This was a bit odd for Kimberly. As soon as they mentioned they were in a relationship everyone here seemed to think "marriage," even if not everyone said it. Now that she thought about it, she supposed it was logical, in a sense, but it wasn't how she was used to thinking: you looked for someone you liked, you dated, you had fun—and if it lasts long enough, you'll get married.

Of course Kimberly had always thought she'd get married someday, and of course she had imagined what it would be like to walk up that that aisle in the most beautiful dress she would ever wear, sit in the beautiful arm chair in front of an ornate altar, the man of her dreams beside her… but it had all seemed so distant. She'd never really thought about looking for a boyfriend _to get married to_.

Now suddenly, and especially after that remark about her popping out children, she began to think, _But it's not just about getting married; it's about… being married._

What would that be like? Kimberly hadn't exactly had the best example in her parents. She'd need to be careful. Sure, she'd thought of marrying Brendan, but she hadn't thought about what it might be like to… be married to him.

_Would Brendan be a good husband?_

Kimberly thought back to the line that letter she had written to Tommy two and a half years back: "_I feel like I've found the person I belong with. He's wonderful, kind and caring._" Well, at the time the first sentence had been a little bit of a fib, given the fledgling nature of their relationship, but Brendan had certainly proven himself kind and caring, so far as she could see.

But… "wonderful"? As a husband? As the husband _she_ belonged with? What… _was_ a wonderful husband, anyway? And what sort of man did _she_ belong with in marriage?

She sighed and let her thoughts get lost in the beautiful violin and harp notes played by some cousins in an outdoor orchestra nearby.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Kimberly accompanied the "Andrew Quinn" branch—Brendan, his parents and his siblings (at least, the ones over sixteen) as well as his mother's siblings and their spouses and children (again, the ones over sixteen)—and a few tagalong second cousins to a pub up in town.<p>

Once they arrived, Brendan patted the tin whistle case he'd brought alone. "Ah, Kim, I think I mentioned we'd be improvising a Trad bad, so… I'm gonna go play."

Kimberly did remember, though she had forgotten during the walk up. She was a bit nervous about facing the crowd alone but she tried not to show it. _It's a bunch of friendly devout people_, she told herself. _I used to face mobs of disgusting slimy Putties and monsters_. "It's okay," she said, trying to smile.

Brendan looked a little apologetic. "Want to sing?"

"Oh, my gosh, are you kidding?" Kimberly looked terrified at the thought.

"Play guitar, even? Why not?"

"I don't know any Irish songs!"

Brendan chuckled. "I've been really bad about takin' you around to the Trad scene in Florida! Well, okay, but when we get back, we'll learn ya right. Next time, you'll be a star!"

_Next time_, thought Kimberly as Brendan took the stage along with his older brother John on the guitar and vocals, his younger sister Kathleen on violin and his younger brother Cathal alternating: bass for songs; Uilleann Pipes for the _really_ traditional instrumentals.

What next time was that? Was that the reunion in five years… when I'm supposed to have two kids by Brendan and be pregnant with a third? Kimberly shuddered a little bit. Not that she didn't want to bear children but… she'd never _thought_ about what it would _be_ like. Sure, she'd had her baby dolls and played "House" growing up—taking advantage of having a reliable guy friend to play the somewhat reluctant father, poor Billy—but that definitely wasn't the same thing. She'd never thought about what it would like to _be_ a mom.

Her own mom was… well, pretty good, especially considering everything that had happened. Kris Hart may not have been the most longsuffering wife, but she was a very attentive mother.

_But would _I_ be a good mom?_ she wondered.

And, more ominously: _Would Brendan be a good father?_

Kimberly tried to put all that out of her mind and leaned up against the bar. It was kind of a grungy establishment but in its own way it was also ruggedly beautiful. Certainly it was full of life, laughter and liquor.

Of course, Kimberly might have appreciated that rustic beauty a bit more had she not been so overwhelmed by everything in general.

"You want something to drink?" called a handsome bartender in front of her as he worked on pouring two Guinnesses and a Carlsburg.

"Umm… not yet, maybe in a sec, thanks!" Kimberly said it quietly but shook her head visibly, allowing the music and the chattering crowds to drown out her voice and let the gestures speak for themselves. As they had gone through the rounds that afternoon, Kimberly had attracted a fair bit of attention, of course as Brendan's prospective future wife, but also due to her American accent. She was beginning to feel like an exotic specimen in a zoological park. Best not to drum up a conversation—and as she had discovered that afternoon, people around here would drum one up really quickly, accent or no.

Fortunately for Kimberly, the barman wasn't able to try, as the bar was very crowded. The forty-strong crowd clearly dominated the tiny establishment, and Kimberly couldn't quite tell who was who, but there were definitely more people in the bar than she had come with. So when she felt a hand pinch her rear end as she stood at the bar, she had no way of knowing whether it was a cousin.

In any event, now seemed like a good time to have a seat. Kimberly darted her eyes around, looking for Brendan's parents Patrick and Caitlin, but they were in the thick of a crowd watching and enjoying the band, pretty difficult to get through to via the mosh pit. And all the bar stools were taken. Looking around, she saw, near the back of the establishment, a table around which sat two middle-aged men and two middle-aged women two benches that looked a little full, but could probably squeeze another person in fairly reasonably. Now… were these people among the family crowd? She tried to remember… ah, yes, yes they were, all of 'em. Okay. That was the best she could hope for at this point.

_It isn't exactly like having my own room, but at least my behind will be secure._

So, Kimberly quickly made her way off to the back. She intended to ask if she could be seated, but there was a heated discussion going on:

"Family reunion?" snuffed a fifty-something man at the table. "With five brothers and sisters in a fifteen-mile radius of this town? What'll these Yanks think of next?"

Kimberly noticed that something about his accent sounded slightly off.

"Rory, _you_ didn't have to come, now!" scolded the woman next to him, probably his wife. "Don't be such a sourpuss."

"What ya _mean_ I didn't have to come? The way you were shootin' me daggers in the eye! But come now, I'm not being a sourpuss! 'Twas a grand idea, but from a Yank?"

"You guys talkin' about me again?" The voice came from the same direction as Kimberly had come from, and spoke in an American accent. It belonged a younger man, who looked about the same age as Brendan's older brother John and who smirked a bit as he sipped from a pint of Guinness and sat down at the far end of the table, not next to Rory and Deirdre. He looked a bit like Brendan, but had straighter hair and a sturdier, more muscular physique.

"Just sayin' yah had a grand country but no idea how to run it!" Rory pointed his finger at Lawrence as he finished the sentence. "Yez get one good chief with Kennedy and go right back to them Orangemen!"

"Shut it with your politics, then!" Deirdre smacked him lightly up the head.

"This ain't Derry," said the man across the table. "Not every Protestant's a Brit, Rory."

"Yis've never lived in the North; that's your problem!" Rory stated indignantly.

"Ach, that's exactly what's wrong with _you_! Listen to you, babblin' on, contradictin' yourself from one sentence to the next! Whatever'd you marry an Ulsterman into the Quinns for, sis?"

Kimberly was so amused by the conversation she forgot to sit down—but quickly remembered that that was why she had come over here when some stranger—perhaps the same one from before, perhaps not; she had no idea—pinched her tush anew.

_Well, I guess if it's all right to grab a stranger's ASS around here, it must be all right to sit down with my boyfriend's family without asking first!_

Time to seek immediate cover.

Immediately, Kimberly slid into the narrow amount of seating space remaining on the right side of Rory, facing the young American man. He noticed her sit down, but no one else did, preoccupied as they were with continuing the heated—and nonsensical—discussion about family and country politics.

"Hi," said Kimberly, grinning widely. "I'm Kimberly; my boyfriend's in the band. You're American, too?"

She saw the young man blink a little bit, perhaps surprised by her forwardness. Normally such forwardness would indeed be out of character for her, but right now she might have been willing to spill her identity as the Pink Ranger to someone who asked, so long as that someone seemed to be someone who would understand where she was coming from culturally. She'd never thought of herself as xenophobic or narrow-minded, but she was just realizing now that, up to now, in her experiences with non-Americans the _others_ had been the foreigners in the crowd: her paternal grandparents were well-integrated into Floridian society, Pierre Rougé was living with her American mother and brother, she and Brendan basically hung out with Americans and only the odd Irish or British colleague or visiting friend, and of course Katherine's accent had stood out among the Rangers'.

_This_, however, was a very new situation for Kimberly.

The young man smiled back, seemingly pleased at the opportunity to be distracted from the conversation. "Hi, I'm Larry. Uh, you're… Brendan's girlfriend, right?"

"Yeah!" said Kimberly. "Oh, _you're_ Larry! Brendan's told me about you!" Evidently, Brendan had told Lawrence Quinn about Kimberly, as well. Lawrence was the middle son of Caitlin O'Driscoll's older brother Damien, a corporate lawyer who had emigrated after his marriage; the couple had born and raised their five children in Manhattan.

"Nothing bad, I hope!" Lawrence chuckled nervously.

"Oh, no, not at all!"

Just then, Kimberly felt herself lightly shoved to the side by Rory next to her. "Sorry, lass," he grunted before turning to his brother-in-law: "Sure, you think yez can just cut the North off, float it to sea and it'll just go away, do ya? Bah! I'm here, and I ain't goin nowhere but back to the castle!" He took his wife's wrist. Looking apologetically to her brother and sister-in-law, Deirdre arose meekly and followed her husband out.

Lawrence pointed to the empty space in front of Kimberly on the table. "Uh… you want a drink?"

Kimberly's eyes went wide. Right now, definitely. "Uh, yeah, actually, I think I really would."

Just then the lady next to Lawrence turned to the man sitting next to her and piped up. "Damien, darling, why don't you go get her her drink? You're pint's run out, anyway."

Damien Quinn let out a grunt and a sight, rolling his eyes but with a twinkle therein and a slight smile on his lips that indicated he was faking frustration at having to rise. "All right, all right!"

"Uh, Kim?" said Lawrence. "These are my parents. Guys, this is Kimberly, Brendan's girlfirend"

"Hi," said Pauline Quinn, Lawrence's mother, smiling cordially. "We met back at the castle." Pauline was a well-polished woman with a few obvious wrinkles on her face but deep auburn hair. Kimberly wondered if it was dyed, but she noticed that the underside of Pauline's hair showed a lighter orange tint, a typical pattern in redheads, so it certainly looked natural.

"How do you do?" said Damien, a pleasant smile on his face. He stood up, and Kimberly saw that he, too, was well-dressed and moved with grace and poise. "What'll it be?"

"Umm, Cosmopolitain… please?" Kimberly grinned.

Damien looked puzzled and glanced over at his son.

"Ah, that's a cocktail with vodka, cranberry juice, triple sec Curaçao and a twist of lime, iced."

"Thanks," bade Kimberly.

Damien chuckled a bit. "We aren't in New York, you know. Won't be any fancy Martini glasses, I'm afraid!"

Kimberly shrugged. "Aw, that's fine!"

_Just as long as I can start consuming some alcohol._

Surprisingly considering the crowd around them, Damien was back in a jiffy with his pint and Kimberly's glass. "Pauline, you'll never believe who I saw workin' the bar. It's old Mick O'Shea!"

"You're kidding me!" exclaimed Pauline. "Haven't seen Mick in twenty years now, has it been?"

"Aye!"

"Well, let's go say hi!" Pauline grabbed her half-finished pint of cider and excused herself from the table. "See yez, kids!"

At last, the Americans were among themselves. Kimberly breathed a sigh of relief, and then Lawrence quickly broke back through the ice. "I was kind of surprised you didn't have a glass when you sat down."

Kimberly laughed a little. "Oh, well, I'm only twenty and… I'm not really a big drinker."

Lawrence chuckled. "You'll never make it in this family."

"Yeah, tell me about it!" Kimberly rolled her eyes as she looked around at the lively scenes playing around her. "Brendan's never been so bad, though… I mean, he hasn't been since I've known him." It dawned on her occasionally that she and Brendan were apart enough that he _could_ probably conceal a drinking problem—although she'd never seen any signs.

"I was joking. Well… there are a few real alcoholics here and there—" he nodded toward the space next to Kimberly where his uncle Rory had been seated—"but most of the Quinns fall somewhere between 'moderately frequent' and 'just borderline dangerous but not quite' within the domain of 'responsible social drinker.'"

This was definitely not something Kimberly was used to. She had always been relatively clean, neither side of her family counted any true drunkards—at least not that she knew of—and what she knew about alcoholism was mostly lifted from textbooks and newspaper stories, as well as a few anecdotes Jason had told her about his parents before they'd been through detox—before she'd known him. The image she had of an alcoholic was one of a sixty-something-year-old man beating on everyone else in the family. But it was also true that family reunions were not particularly frequent on either side, and that apart from her mother and two of her mother's siblings, who happened to live respectively in Angel Grove and in Stone Canyon, she didn't know much of her family all that well.

Kimberly stayed silent as she reflected a little on this. Then, Lawrence asked, "You having fun?

"Oh, yeah, I guess." Kimberly smiled. "I mean, I've only been here a few hours. Just enough to unpack, make the rounds at the cocktail, have dinner with Brendan and his parents and walk up here with the crowd." She looked around, hoping to think of something to help her change the subject, but couldn't think of anything. So instead, she found something pretty neutral regarding the reunion. "Even in South Florida you're hard-pressed to find ambiance like this."

"Mom thought I was crazy when I brought up the idea," explained Lawrence.

"Hmm? What idea?"

"Oh, to do a family reunion in Ireland."

"Seriously? You organized it?"

"Yes, I did!" exclaimed Lawrence proudly. "Well, mostly. My parents helped a lot, and so did Brendan's mom—she's the one who found us this place. I'd wanted to try to organize this for years but I was at NYU law school until last May and then I passed the New York State Bar in September—and suddenly even though I was working in my dad's firm I had more time than I'd had since I was about 19." He chuckled. "So, I thought, hey, why not get the ball rolling now, while I can?

"But when I pitched it at first, my mom said, 'Why would the Irish need a family reunion? They've got everyone right there!' But I knew I could do it. I majored in marketing in undergrad at Columbia, you see… all I had to do was bill it as an international networking event—and bribe everyone with free beer!"

They paused to applaud as the improved band finished a beautiful jig.

"I just can't believe how diverse this family is," remarked Kimberly. "I mean, I've met lawyers, architects, music teachers, insurance agents, Brendan's dad is the foreman at a hat factory…"

Lawrence nodded. "You know what, though? Brendan—when he first came to the States, well, I'm sure you know he went to New York; he came to see us. I thought he'd be—I mean, his family's almost the opposite of mine; they're small town folks, I grew up in the Upper East Side, my father's senior partner at his law firm—I thought we'd never get along but here he still likes all the same books, still likes doing all the same crazy shit like this." Just then he covered his mouth and stared into his nearly empty pint glass. "Excuse my mouth."

Kimberly laughed. "It's okay," she assured him. She'd heard plenty of colorful phrases that day, especially around the second and older part of the third generation. Overall, however she sensed the sort of free-spirited gentleness that she had fallen in love with in Brendan about Lawrence—albeit with a bit of Park Avenue gloss and touch of snobbery. Fake snobbery, but snobbery all the same. He didn't seem to be trying to hit on Kimberly directly, but his rather obvious big-school name-dropping betrayed a mental need to impress her.

"Maybe I should quit drinking for tonight." Lawrence looked at his watch. "And it's only eleven-thirty. Man, I'm doing pathetic. I think law school and all this planning destroyed my tolerance."

From behind them, a strong middle-aged man's voice with a thick brogue cut into the conversation. "Well, you gonna just sweep her up all night, there? Not let a man a minute to talk with his future daughter-in-law?" It was Brendan's father, Patrick.

The whites of Kimberly's eyes became as big as dinner plates. _Not again._

"Patrick O'Driscoll!" scolded Brendan's mother, Caitlin, whacking her husband's arm. "Don't heckle the poor girl; me aunt's done that just plenty already!" She turned her attention to the young people. "Your mother's over there looking for you, Larry."

Caitlin smiled down at Kimberly and caught her eye. "Mind if we have a seat?"

"Oh, please, go ahead," Kimberly obliged. So Caitlin and Patrick sat down with their second-youngest child, Adrianne. Adrianne was only fifteen, but according to Brendan she liked to tag along everywhere, even if she accepted that there were certain thinks—such as drinking—that she couldn't yet do.

"So how are you liking old Ireland, now?" asked Patrick , pulling out a pipe and starting to puff on it

Patrick was more rugged in his appearance than was his brother-in-law Damien, but still he dressed well and looked dignified. Kimberly had expected to feel intimidated by Brendan's father and his powerful demeanor, but now she sensed a large—if slightly rough—measure of warmth and good intent in his manner, even if remark from just a moment ago still grated on her just a bit. "To be honest it's just slightly intimidating."

"Ah," replied Caitlin empathetically. "You're not used to the number of people, I'm sure."

"Yeah, I'm not," agreed Kimberly. _Among other things._ "This family's _huge_."

"There were ten in me da's family," Caitlin told her. "I've had six siblings and six children. It's not always done these days but it's not unheard of."

"It's kind of interesting for me, actually." That was a good, neutral way to put it. Kimberly had absolutely no idea what she thought of it all otherwise. "My own family's pretty small and…" Kimberly trailed off, wondering if it was a good idea to mention her parents' divorce. She didn't even know if they knew about it. "We're not really close, everyone all together all the time."

Adrianne piped up. "It must be nice to have your own space, though. Do you have your own room?"

Kimberly nodded. "Yeah… well, I kind of divide my time between like, three houses."

Now Andrianne's eyes widened. "Three houses? And you have your own room in each one?"

"Umm… in two of them, yeah."

"Lucky you!"

_Oh, the irony._

"Besides," added Patrick, "Get a pool of family members this large, there's always some apples you'd rather not touch."

"Or that you'd rather not have touch your ass," Kimberly murmured.

Caitlin squinted and leaned in to look more closely at Kimberly. "What was that, dear?"

Kimberly covered her mouth. Had she actually _said_ those words just now? She searched for a way to twist the phrase into something more benign, but to no avail. She was too exhausted from travelling and her cerebral cortex was about to short-circuit from all the afternoon and evening familial festivities. So she opted to say, "Umm… nothing."

Kimberly was slightly frustrated with herself. She never swore, not in anything resembling normal circumstances.

The operative qualifier being, of course, "anything resembling normal."

**TO BE CONTINUED…**


	3. Music I Heard, Mistakes I Made

_**Disclaimer: **__The quote comes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's _The Gulag Archipelago_. _Sleeping Beauty_ was written by Charles Perrault. The ballet was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and the lyrics for the Walt Disney adaptation of said ballet, as well as the specific versions of the characters therein, are the property of the Walt Disney Company._

_**A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget  
><strong>_Part II: Music I Heard, Mistakes I Made  
><strong>by MegaSilver<strong>

"Ye think you're all immune, then, do ye? That you'll never do the sort of thing that you enjoy watching cut powerful men to their knees?"

From the spiralling baroque pulpit, the thirty-five-year-old priest—_"Me first cousin, Ryan O'Connor,"_ Brendan had told Kimberly—spoke with a powerful, piercing voice that resonated—but not annoyingly so—throughout the beautiful Gothic revival interior of the Church.

"Well, I'll end with a quote from a man who was not a Catholic, but who well understood the truth about the penetration of evil in our own midst.

"'_Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil… It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.'_

When he had finished reading the quote, Father O'Connor gazed out upon his family all three hundred and fifty Quinns plus one Hart crowded into the edifice for a special familial celebration that Sunday. His mouth was straight and stern, but his eyes were warm, alive and sympathetic. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN."

Kimberly's own eyes were practically popping out of her head as Father O'Connor descended the pulpit and made his way back up to the altar.

_So much for good-Rangers-evil-space aliens, huh?_ was her first thought. Kimberly was rarely wont to dwell on her Power Past—her life and her mind were very much elsewhere these days—but the seeming clash with what she had known for so long really brought out the highlights of what had established her own line of thought regarding good versus evil.

"_Credo in unum Deum…"_

Along with all the other parishioners, Kimberly arose for the recitation of the Nicene Crede. She had learned it in English and in Latin many, many years ago in her catechism class and since forgotten it entirely. It had come back fairly quickly after she had attended Mass four or five times with her grandparents and Brendan, but this morning she did not recite it. This morning the _Credo_ was sung exclusively by the chorists, and in an unfamiliar intonation.

On those occasions when Kimberly went to Church with her grandparents or Brendan, there did sometimes happen be Gregorian chant. But the choirs she had heard at those parishes in Florida had absolutely nothing on this one. It was an ensemble of about thirty of Brendan's relatives—all among the musical ones—who had banded together specifically for the reunion and assembled a mix of mono- and polyphonic chants for the Mass, and who executed them so skilfully that Kimberly, sometime folk-rock guitarist and singer though she was, thought she might have to rethink her definition of music. She had never been into classical music: occasionally her mother had put on a nice Bach or Beethoven CD, but Kris Rougé wasn't all that musical herself and it never seemed to make for a natural atmosphere in the house.

But _this_ music, this just seemed to _belong_ where they were on so many levels.

The family had even made out a short program for those non-musicians among them, and Kimberly glanced over it after the _Credo_. The piece they were singing now was César Franck's "Dextera Domini – Offertory for Easter Sunday," which she had never heard before. Actually, she had never heard of anything that was in the program.

The singing, the organ and the priest's chants held Kimberly's steadfast attention until suddenly they all stopped. The ceremonials did not stop, but suddenly total silence reigned, to be penetrated only at a few select moments by the cassock- and linen-clad young knights servicing at the altar.

Then, just as suddenly, once the priest had raised and then set back down a beautiful golden goblet, the music reigned again. And just as suddenly it stopped yet again.

At last Kimberly noticed those around them rising from the pews to receive Communion. She herself would not—and had not, not in nearly twelve years, mindful as she was of what Sister Bernadette had taught her:

"_To receive Holy Communion, one must be a baptized and practicing Catholic. One must have fasted at least one hour—ideally three—and must not have any mortal sin on one's conscience. If one has mortal sin on one's conscience, one must attend Confession before receiving Communion."_

Mostly okay. It was the "practicing Catholic" part that had Kimberly impaired. She still couldn't get herself to climb all the way back into religion. Not that she had anything against religion; in fact, she kind of liked it. But if she hesitated, it was because she wondered just why she would it. Without being narcissistic, she honestly thought herself a pretty good, stable girl already—especially given what her parents had done.

As more and more people began rising, Kimberly felt something on her right side. Odd… nobody had touched her. But what she felt was the warmth of another human being radiating from right next to her. Strange that she would have felt one person in a crowd of 350, but so it was. Or maybe it wasn't heat, but whatever it was, it was enough to alert her to the fact that someone remained kneeling next to her and prompt her to look and confirm that that someone was in fact none other than Brendan O'Driscoll.

Brendan was pretending to look straight ahead toward the altar in prayerful meditation, but he noticed Kimberly looking at him, because he turned his head to face her, a somewhat sheepish expression on his face. He grinned a little and shrugged his shoulders.

Kimberly just shook her head. She knew for a fact Brendan had been to Confession just a couple of days before they had jumped on that plane over to Paris, and that whatever sins he might have committed were certainly not of a "mortal" nature. He was obviously trying to keep her from feeling "left out" for not taking Communion.

Maybe it was supposed to be cute. Kimberly found it little more than an annoying affectation. After all, there were at least a few others in the Church not communicating. More ominously, though, if she and Brendan—the unmarried couple in the bunch—both abstained, she could definitely see some of the folks who'd inquired or mouthed off about wedding plans heckling them about the "scandal."

So right then and there she bared her teeth and leaned just a little bit inwards towards Brendan. "_Go_," she hissed in a whisper.

Without a word, he complied.

_Thank you, dear Lord._

* * *

><p>What a day it had been. Mass at 9 AM, farewell brunch at 10:30, round of goodbyes starting at 11:30, jump into the car at 12:10 ("I thought we'd never get out in time to make our flight!" gasped Brendan—goodbyes in his family tended to last about eight minutes multiplied by the number of people to bid farewell to), arrival in Shannon at 1:00, departure for Heathrow at 2:00, arrival at Heathrow at 3:30.<p>

Everything had seemed to go so smoothly, so much more than they could have hoped for. So, that little scandal averted, Kimberly got to have a pretty uneventful farewell brunch right after Mass before she and Brendan hopped into the little economy car to head back down to Shannon and its airport.

Now, on the Heathrow Express train into the city, Brendan let out a sigh of contentment. "Boy it'll be a culture shock to get back to the States, won't it?"

Kimberly smiled and replied, "Yeah," although she was thinking, _For you_.

Well… objectively speaking, it hadn't been a BAD weekend per se. Not at all what she would have expected, had indeed she thought to try to expect anything at all. She would never have been mentally prepared to confront three hundred and fifty close-knit relatives all gathered in one place at the same time, sleep in a bedroom of bunkbeds along with Brendan's two sisters and one female cousin—_Is this what the college dorms would have felt like?_ she'd wondered—get her ass squeezed twice, get hit on by some horny teenager and be confronted nearly a dozen times about her future marriage to Brendan when they had never even mentioned up the subject between the two of them.

_I wonder if anyone had ever heckled Brendan about that over the phone… or_—more disturbingly—_if Brendan had been the one to bring it up!_

Surely not? Brendan was always so gallant with her. But she'd never met his family; she'd never really gotten to know his culture on such an intimate folksy level and see where he came from. There might be a whole lot she didn't know.

She tried to put that out of her mind. Right now, she was with Brendan, and happy because she knew they were going to London together. Just the two of them, no family pressures… they always had fun that way.

Besides, _it hadn't been a bad weekend_. She tried to think about the positives: many _very_ nice people, endless—albeit EXTREMELY fatty and salty—food, the traditional céilí ball last night… oh, boy, had _that_ been an experience. Kimberly and Brendan had gone out dancing rock or waltz, but the céilí was just so much faster and electrically charged than anything she had ever tried in her life. She'd not had a clue about what to do, but it was pretty simple to follow along and do what everyone else did—especially when they'd started on the spinning. The girls had been whisked around from man to man and at one point Kimberly had even found herself spinning a few moments with that redhead named Frankie—and of course very grateful when the moment had come to pass on to the next one.

And then there was the musical ambiance. That she had loved, and surely the music from this morning had to stand out as the one thing purely positive about the whole weekend.

If only she could forget Brendan's very close _faux pas_ in the middle of that. She'd never seen him take piety to quite that level; nor had she ever seen her grandparents—or Rocky, another practicing Catholic reasonably close to herself—behave so sanctimoniously. She debated whether to bring it up, but decided against that: Brendan had seemed to get the message when she had whispered him to go communicate, so he probably understood how silly he'd been.

_Still…_

* * *

><p>At approximately 4:45 PM, the Irish-American couple knocked on the door to a flat inside a nice residential unit a bit northwest of Soho, a bit east of Marylebone.<p>

A jovial, slightly pudgy red-headed young Irishman flung open the door to welcome Kimberly and Brendan into his flat. "Ye made it alive!" he laughed as he and Brendan exchanged a bear hug.

"How are you?" Brendan laughed. "This's my girlfriend Kim."

"How are you, Kim; I'm Darren," Brendan's friend announced, kissing Kimberly's hand.

"Hi, nice to meet you." Kimberly could never help but be amused at the way the Irish casually tossed about "Howareyou"s, almost more as a salutation than as a question.

"Well, there, come on in! Let's set ye up before the crack's upon us!" Darren bowed and showed his friends the way in. "Brendan probably told ya, Kim, we go way, way back to the National School: we started being friends one day in second grade… see, back in those days, Brendan was a good boy and got good marks, so I mocked him and said he was in love with Mrs. Leahy. But I did it just outside the schoolyard—see, Brendan was too smart to try to fight at school, so we had thought he wouldn't fight back…"

As Darren prattled on, Kimberly's attention turned to the décor of the flat. A cozy abode, the panels and ceiling trim testified to the building's old age and classical architectural style. And yet the walls were plastered not with lavishly framed Renaissance or Romantic paintings, but with posters of classic, Celtic and British rock musicians—Elvis Costello, the Pogues, the Beatles and so forth—and the living room was furnished with retro-1970's trappings.

So it seemed rather odd to behold the sight of Darren's roommate—tall, slender, blond, clad in conservative slacks and a sweater vest, in contrast to the apartment but also to the blue-jeaned, sweat-shirted Darren.

"Brendan, you know Roger, don't you!

"'Course! Nice seein' you again," Brendan bade Roger, shaking his hand.

"Same to you," Roger agreed, sporting a full smile. He turned to Kimberly. "How do you do, Miss. I'm Roger Wyndham."

He spoke English with a perfect Received Pronunciation accent, something that took Kimberly a bit by surprise. "Kimberly Hart. I'm Brendan's girlfriend."

"American?" Roger retained his smile, but his eyebrows rose just a bit.

"Yeah," she said, grinning a little. She couldn't help but look at Brendan mischievously. "So you have an _English_ friend?" Over the weekend she'd heard _English_, _Brits_, _Saxons_, _Proddies_ and so forth in quite the variety of derisive contexts, particularly from the mouth of that Rory Maguire from County Down in the British-governed north of Ireland.

Darren put his arm around the straight-laced Englishman and squeezed. "Ah, well, we forgive him for that, now!"

"Besides," said Roger, looking at Brendan, "_you've_ got an American for a girlfriend!"

Brendan raised one eyebrow and corner of his mouth. Kimberly gritted her teeth, not quite sure how to react to that, before she saw Roger trying to catch her eye.

"Look, it's all in good fun, Kim! Come on; it's two-on-two, non-Irish on Irish: you and I can josh the Paddies around a bit here!"

"Not if ye know what's good for yez, you won't!" Brendan growled, smiling.

"Hey," said Kimberly, "sorry to be antisocial, but… would you guys mind if I used your bathroom? I could just use a little refreshing."

"No, not at all," offered Roger. Spotting her traveler's kit, he whisked it up and led her to the washroom, she following with her suitcase. "There you go."

"Thank you." When he had closed the door, Kimberly surveyed the place. She had definitely seen worse men's bathrooms—she would at least be able to shower and feel clean in this one—but still it looked about due for a ritual deep-bleaching. Maybe she'd make herself useful at some point on this visit. Feel like she fit in more in an apartment with three guys…

_An apartment with three guys_, she reflected as she finished brushing her teeth and pulled out her makeup kit. She couldn't remember having ever been the lone female in a crowd before. It was just a little intimidating.

_Only four nights_, she reminded herself.

That was, of course, exactly what she had said to herself when she, Brendan and her family had arrived back at the small Parisian flat last Monday morning. And it was about what she had said to herself during the family reunion: _Only two nights._ And then after these four nights in London they would be headed back to Ireland to spend a long weekend in Brendan's parents' house… the famous four-bedroom abode, to be shared with Brendan, his parents and his six siblings—no, just five: "John's got his own place in Galway city now."

So much new stuff this trip. So many new people. So little _space_! After this vacation, getting back into gymnastics would seem like a vacation.

_Gymnastics. New stuff._

It dawned on Kimberly that she and Brendan _still_ hadn't had time to discuss that little Texas issue. She hadn't been able to think of anything really productive on the car ride to Shannon, and she had slept the entire flight and part of the Heathrow Express journey into the City of Westminster.

_Oh, my gosh._

So, this was her future husband and father of her two kids plus one more on the way by 2004—_thank you so, so much, Great-Aunt Maryellen_—and they go on a nice two-week trip across northwestern Europe together and couldn't even find a nice romantic moment alone to gaze into each other's eyes or discuss, oh, a little thing such as Kimberly maybe moving a thousand miles away within the next couple of months?

She sighed to herself. What had she expected, that they'd be staying in Ritz-Carltons in all the capital cities and sipping cocktails in black-tie and red dress every night at various embassies? She ought to have been over the whole romantic dreamy stage. She'd been to Europe before—and Paris, no less, and quite often.

_But not with my boyfriend…_

When Kimberly emerged from the bathroom twelve minutes later, she heard a man crying out, "NOOO!" She made her way quickly back to the living room, where Darren had Roger in his death grip and the pair had their sides pressed up against the wall. Brendan had both of his hands pressed against Roger's shoulder and hip respectively and looked as though he intended to drive the poor English boy right through the wall.

"Who's gonna win the Rugby World Cup this fall?" Brendan growled, grinning mischievously.

Roger was grimacing, trying to break free but clearly sequestered. "ENGLAND, you cunt!" he cursed. "AAH!"

After that little nasty name, Brendan was obviously pushing Roger harder into the wall.

"Who's it gonna be-e?" taunted Darren. He stuck out his tongue and wiggled it. "Bleah-leah-leah-leah-leah!"

"I just… told you—AAUGH! Let me go!" cried Roger.

"Not until you say Ireland plants England, 63 to 14, this October!" insisted Brendan.

Kimberly rolled her eyes and couldn't help but recall a memory Tommy and Zack ganging up on Billy this way one day outside the Youth Center after Billy's blue belt test: Tommy had effectively immobilized their poor blue teammate on the ground while Zack had shaded the entirety of his face with a broad-pointed blue laundry marker to accentuate the symbolism. That day, it had been supposed that she and Trini had left to go to the mall, although they had stood outside the Youth Center just chatting for about fifteen minutes before getting in the car… and once the spectacle had started, there was no way they were going to leave—or intervene by making their presence known, so they had ducked behind some trees and enjoyed the little WMA translucent paint demonstration.

She supposed, as Jason, Zack, Tommy and even her mother had advised her, that guys will simply be guys.

_Still, a little chivalry couldn't be all that bad…_ especially since today, unlike that day in Angel Grove, she didn't have the feminine security of Claire's or her own bedroom to retreat to after the show.

"Hey, guys!" she called, grinning.

At the sound of her voice, the trio jumped. Brendan and Darren quickly released Roger and grinned sheepishly. Roger, for his part, was blushing like a rose and covering his mouth, probably conscious of the filthy word he had applied to Kimberly's boyfriend. She just kept grinning innocently at all three of them.

"Hey, Kim," said Brendan quietly. "Ah, we were just… it was Darren's idea, see."

"Yeah," said Kimberly, still smiling.

"What're you talkin' 'bout? You were the one who brought up rugby!" Darren retorted.

"No, I brought that up after _you_ said we should have an Ireland-versus-England match after _Roger_ made fun of our accents!"

"Lads, lads!" said Roger, smiling and laughing a little but shaking just a bit. "Let's not have Ireland-versus-Ireland on the same day, too!"

Darren rolled his eyes and sighed. Then he pointed at Brendan and said, jocularly, "Tomorrow, _you're_ goin' down!"

Brendan smacked Darren lightly on the shoulder. "Easy, not in front of the ladies, now!"

Kimberly certainly appreciated the chivalry. But it did dawn on her just now that she was probably capable of physically intervening to break up any match among these three if need be. A perverse side of her wondered if maybe it would be fun to get to show off that way at some point…

Brendan walked over to her. "Hey, ah… The boys wanted to go hit the pubs, then find some food and then meet up with another friend here—usually means we're in for a pub crawl. Are you up for it, are you?"

Kimberly cocked her head a little, gritting her teeth again. The last few days of immersion in Irish culture had been rather intense; England's pub scene might—_might_—be milder, but she needed a respite anyway. "Look," she said low enough so that Darren and Roger couldn't hear, "they're your friends. Why don't you just go? I'll relax a bit."

Brendan looked a bit sympathetic. "C'mere, Kim; he really meant that American bit as a joke. They're good mates, though, real easy to talk with; you won't be left out."

"No, it's not that; it's just… I think I could just do with something a bit more low-key. You go, though. Have a guys' night out."

She could see that Brendan was a bit relieved not to have to look after anyone but still feeling guilty and responsible all the same. "Look, tomorrow we'll go do something, just you and I, we will. I promise. I know these accommodations aren't…" He sighed. "After the reunion I thought, if only I could find some rogue priest and propose and elope—"

Kimberly held up her hand. "Brendan, I understand. Besides, my mother asked me a million questions and she would have flipped out if she'd thought I was staying in a hotel with my boyfriend."

Some might consider Kimberly's mother Kris paranoid for that stance; others, puritanical. In reality, it wasn't so much that Kris wanted to force her hand on Kimberly's actions—something that Kris would have been all too conscious of her inability to do given the degree to which she and her ex-husband had forfeited their moral authority over the past six years—as that she wanted to remind her daughter to think prudently. For Kimberly's mother had a sister who had dropped out of college due to a pregnancy and then been abandoned by her boyfriend in the sixth month. And for Kimberly, still doing competition gymnastics, the stakes were very high.

"You're not uncomfortable here; you're sure?" Brendan pressed.

It _was_ a little awkward, but Kimberly could think of worse situations. In any case, staying with friends was far preferable to dealing with either the awkwardness or the logical conclusion of a room together. "Really, they _are_ nice guys… I'm just not used to the whole cultural thing."

Brendan nodded, not looking directly at her. "Well, maybe you could do with a night to yourself, then."

"Yeah; look, it's light really late in the summer here. I'll take a walk around the park, see what there is in the neighborhood. She leaned up to kiss her boyfriend. "You'll be back late?"

"Not too late; most pubs close by eleven in London."

* * *

><p>One thing Kimberly really loved about Europe—and that she hadn't gotten enough of on this trip—was the high latitude. Back home, one was always careful never to bask under the more direct rays that hit the Florida beaches without at least fairly powerful sunblock, reapplied regularly throughout the day. Not that one couldn't get cooked in northern Europe, but one had far more latitude. Just don't sit in one place with little clothing for over an hour looking straight up at the nearest star and everything should be fine.<p>

So Kimberly leaned her head back, closed her eyes and sighed contentedly as she stood on the sunny side of the willow tree between the lake and the bandstand. Whatever else may be said about the apartment they were staying in, the location was unbeatable: just five blocks south of Regent's Park.

And Soho, Mayfair all within walking distance? Tomorrow she was definitely going to hit the shops.

_Oh, wait… tomorrow's my day out with Brendan. Oh, well. He's getting his rugby-boys' night right now. He can deal._ She grinned mischievously.

She was feeling a little bit annoyed with her boyfriend—and a little bit guilty for feeling annoyed. After all, Brendan had probably been a bit stressed himself about the oddball marital situation of her mother, and they'd stayed with the Rougés far longer than at the Quinn family reunion.

Still, this whole hard-drinking close-knit communal fun was just so far removed from anything the two of them had ever done together—including the things Brendan propositioned—in Florida, and yet it was all natural for him. He wasn't forcing her into anything, of course, but she just felt so… _exposed_ to the elements in a way she wasn't used to. Just plunked down into an unfamiliar world and no refuge, no sanctuary, nothing with any sort of affinity with her past to ground her down and remind her that it was okay, that she belonged somewhere… _nothing and no one—_

Suddenly, Kimberly saw a familiar figure heading around the lake, coming in her general direction. She blinked a couple of times, but the familiarity only persisted. She squinted her eyes and tried to get a better look.

Yes. She would know that outfit, that face shape anywhere, anytime, from any distance—even if the haircut was radically different.

Should she just let him pass? Or should she try to say hi, catch up?

_It's… it's something from my past… a part of me._

But how awkward would it be?

_It's been over two and a half years_, she told herself. _Plenty of time for emotions to settle. He's moved on—boy, has he moved on…_

Looking at the ground, trying to convince herself to just swallow her fear and approach, she failed to hear the footsteps approaching her directly from the front. "Kimberly?" came a shocked voice.

Startled that he would recognize her, Kimberly looked up and stated him straight in the eye. "Tommy!"

He hadn't changed a bit. Well… his hair had changed. Where the long locks have been, his mop was now short, textured, tapered… but his expression was still the same: deep, humorous, pensive. And sure enough, he was clad in a steely black Karate uniform.

"What are you doing here?" exclaimed Tommy.

"I'm on vacation with my boyfriend; he went out on a pub crawl with the guys and I just decided to take a stroll through the park! Oh, my gosh! What are _you_ doing here?" Kimberly was just a little nervous about mentioning that infamous boyfriend—still the same one she had mentioned in her last letter to Tommy—but with the nervous shock it slipped out a bit more easily.

Tommy shrugged, a puzzled expression on his face. "I live here! You didn't know?"

Kimberly had indeed known… but she had put the thought out of her mind when Brendan had suggested they visit friends in London, not sure how it would be if she tried contacting the Olivers—and certainly not expecting to actually run into them in one of the largest metropolitan areas on the globe.

"Of course I knew!" she said. "I mean, I'd heard—Jason told me. But… like, are you just out for a walk? Where's… where's Katherine?"

"Oh, she's in Vienna." When Kimberly looked surprised, he continued. "She had a ballet performance this weekend; she's coming back in… when was it? Oh, yeah, tomorrow morning. No, I just… I got off a couple tube stops early so I could walk through the park to get home; we live up in Swiss Cottage," he explained, pointing northward.

There was an awkward silence and a little bit of heavy breathing. The two former Rangers were both quite flustered from this sudden encounter. A few seconds later, they both asked in unison, "How have you been?" Both laughed at the synchronization. "Umm…" they both began, again in awkward unison.

Then Tommy motioned towards Kimberly. "Go ahead."

"Umm… good! I umm… well, there were the Global Games, and—"

"Oh, yeah, that's right!" interrupted Tommy. "You got a silver and a bronze; congratulations!"

Recalling that bit of news, Tommy wanted to feel happy for his former teammate and girlfriend. But there was just a little bit of pain, just a little bit of jealousy masked behind his warm words. Tommy was probably not going to make the WMAC or anything like that, and he had given up a chance to compete in something spectacular when he had left his uncle's racing track behind.

Here was Kimberly, his ex-girlfriend, living her dream. Down in Vienna was Katherine, his wife, living her dream.

And Tommy's dream? Since 1993 his only dream had only been to be with and protect the people he loved. In getting married, he was supposed to have opened the door to that.

Yet now he wondered if some sort of athletic performing dream such as Kimberly and Katherine were presently pursuing might not be less stressful.

_No_, he told himself. _I couldn't. _No, because thinking about racing or fighting, the sight he imagined and cherished the most was that the people he loved there in the stadium cheering him on.

_Katherine's my wife. My dream. My future._

Tommy's thoughts were clipping along at the pace of a TGV, but then Kimberly quickly cut into them.

"Oh, you knew?"

"Yeah! Kat keeps up with the Pan Global Games; she saw you in the paper!"

"Wow!" Kimberly laughed. "Yeah, thanks… no, it was awesome. And Guadalajara, Mexico… _really_ cool town! We all had such a blast, the whole team. Oh, my gosh, the food…" She shook her head. "I swear, I will never eat at a Mexican restaurant in the United States again! It just blew us all away!"

"Aww man! You've got to tell us all about it! I guess… you're gonna meet your boyfriend for dinner?"

Kimberly blinked. "Umm… no, actually… they, uh… I told them they should go have a guys' night out; they wanted to do a pub crawl and I was a bit wiped out from this weekend." She let out a puff of air. "Ho, another series of wild stories!"

Tommy's heart leapt a little. Someone he knew, very well, here in London, free for dinner. In his conscious mind he forgot that that someone happened to be an ex-girlfriend with which a very emotionally intense relationship had ended quite abruptly.

As for the sub-conscious… who knew?

"Y-you ah… maybe want to have a bite?" he said. At that moment the thought entered into his conscious that perhaps that was not a good idea, but it was too late. Quickly he worked to push the thought back.

"Uh…" Kimberly looked as though she might be hesitating. That didn't make it any easier to suppress his own self-redoubting.

Then, with a sheepish grin, she said, "Sure, why not? Um, do you know a good place?"

_A good place. _In London that wasn't easy, certainly not without a ton of cash on hand. That was something Tommy didn't really have… but come on. He couldn't just take Kimberly to a cheap gyro stand.

Then, an idea hit him. "Well, actually… I've got a ton of food at the house and I'm afraid it might go bad if I try to keep it too long but… I wasn't sure how I'd heat it up by myself. I don't know, would you… you want to come see the flat, we can catch a bite, then I'll walk you back to your friends' place?"

Kimberly seemed to hesitate once more. But at last she assented: "Okay. Sure, why not?"

* * *

><p>It probably was a mistake for Tommy to ask to dine with Kimberly, though an understandable mistake given the circumstances. But the legitimate budgetary and culinary concerns aside, it was a mistake to invite a lonely young lady—particularly this one—up to his apartment with his wife absent.<p>

And it was a mistake for Kimberly to accept the invitation. Still, the longing for some sort of deep connection to her past after years so far away from anything she had ever known in her childhood, barely keeping in touch with her oldest friends and seeing her family only occasionally and in places so unlike anywhere they had ever lived together, and after this last weekend and in the middle of what seemed to be a week of immersion into a different culture and with no lonely refuge to creep out to, she could scarcely resist the temptation. Certainly she told herself consciously that it was legitimate for her to care about Tommy, despite the way she had ended things so abruptly.

And perhaps in itself it was legitimate. But when one is away from one's established routines and traditions there is a risk that one will lose touch with norms and codes of daily life, not simply from a ceremonial point of view. There is a risk that, under the stress or simply because of the unfamiliarity, one will forget certain codes that help make life in community and among even close friends and family possible and liveable.

Such as standards of propriety.

And those were certainly standards that both Tommy and Kimberly were allowing themselves to flaunt openly, there around that beautiful oak table in the rustic Georgian flat, eating up that sumptuous Ritz dinner that Tommy had originally bought to share with Katherine. In fairness to Tommy, had he remembered why he had bought it, he probably wouldn't have been inclined to eat it with another woman.

But then, Tommy and memory are like water and oil.

"This is good!" exclaimed Kimberly.

"Yeah, I know; I can't believe it's been in the fridge for three days!" remarked Tommy.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah—I took it out now because I thought it might go bad or something."

Kimberly had been the one to show him how to reheat the food properly to get as close to the original flavor and texture as possible. "Yeah, you don't really want to leave this stuff in too much longer than that." She took another bite of the lamb shank in front of her, chewed and swallowed.

"So," said Tommy, shifting the subject, "tell me about your trip."

"Hmm? Oh, this weekend!" Kimberly took a sip of the red Bordeaux wine in front of her and began. "Actually… okay, see, my boyfriend, Brendan, grew up in Ireland, so… this weekend they had a big family reunion out near Galway. And I was already going to come to Paris this summer to visit my mother. But since none of our parents except my dad had ever met the other one, we decided we'd come up together and see everyone. So, we spent a weekend in Oise with my mom and stepdad and brother, then went back to Paris for four days, then went to Galway for the family reunion, then… hopped over here, because he had some friends who'd been after him to come stay with them so we decided we'd just visit around the city."

"Whoa, man. The family reunion!" Tommy chuckled. "I never met most of Kat's family until our wedding day. How was it?"

Eyes wide, Kimberly inhaled deeply. "It was… interesting; let's just say it was interesting!" She chuckled nervously. "No, they were all really nice, like, _really_ nice. Well," she corrected herself, thinking back to Rory and to her assailant from the pub—"mostly. But it's a _huge_ family—three hundred and fifty people there… everyone just like, knows each other, knows what everyone else is up to, thinks they need to help get you married as soon as possible…" She chuckled. "Total culture shock."

"Yeah, I'll bet." Suddenly, Tommy had an idea. "Hey… do you want to hear the ballet Kat's doing in Austria?"

"Sure!"

Quickly, Tommy walked across the reception room and put on a CD.

Kimberly nodded. "It's really nice!" And she did find it sounded nice, but… this first piece, at least, didn't really speak to her.

Returning to the table, Tommy relaxed and stretched out a bit. His plate was empty, and little food remained in the casseroles. "I'm starting to get to know classical music a little bit. You know, all these ballets and everything… aw, man, if I could sing, I'd probably be able to hum _The Nutcracker_ without any sheet music by the new year!"

Kimberly chuckled. She didn't know ballet compositions at all, although she did pointe and bar work for gymnastics and she certainly appreciated the art. She hadn't ever tried to force Tommy to take her to _The Nutcracker_ around Christmastime—though she had definitely done so to Brendan this past year. "This isn't _The Nutcracker_, though, is it?"

"No, it's _Sleeping Beauty_. Same composer, though: Tchaikovsky."

"Oh, okay." Kimberly swirled her wine a little bit. She had heard it was desirable to do so to release the bouquet, though she had not tried enough wine to know just what she was supposed to be smelling for. At any rate this wine seemed to taste good enough. "Brendan's family's really musical," she remarked. "He and his siblings had this little improv Irish folk band, there's a whole lot of orchestral instrumentalists and he said probably over half the people there sang in Church choirs for some extended period of time." She chuckled a little. "Except Brendan."

"He's like me, huh?"

They had been there for an hour and Kimberly was just barely finished with one glass of wine, but she was settling quite comfortably down, there in the ambiance of very familiar, very dear company. An hour and a half ago she would have been shocked at this, openly comparing her old boyfriend to her new—in front of the old. Right now, she wasn't even thinking about how improprietous that might be. "He _can_ sing. He doesn't really have an incredible range, but he's not too bad technically. But his brothers and sisters _all_ sing in their parish Church choir and according to Brendan they're all _really_ good singers, so he feels like he—"

She paused as something on the track of the CD caught her ear. "Wait—I _do_ know this! It's—" She stopped and listened to a couple more bars before trying to insert the words she knew: "_Health to the princess, wealth to the princess/All hail the Princess Aurora!_ It's the music from the Disney movie, but instrumental!"

Tommy nodded, smiling. "They adapted the music from the Tchaikovsky ballet for the movie."

"Wow." Kimberly laughed. "I cannot believe I'm such a doofus I didn't even know that. That was always my favorite Disney movie when I was a little girl."

"I can't say I had a favorite."

"I didn't think you would have."

"I did kind of like _Fantasia_, though."

"I saw that one one time, I think."

"Yeah, I watched it with Kat about eight months ago, I think. If you like classical music, it's just a bunch of really colourful animation set to Tchaikovsky and Bach and other famous composers' pieces, but it's pretty cool."

"Yeah, I remember that much. But I don't really know a lot about classical music," admitted Kimberly. "After the last couple of days, though… they had a family choir at Church this morning and it was just _amazing_. Like, I'd never heard classical music that was that _good_ and that just totally fit the mood of the room but wasn't in a theatre." There was a brief pause. Then Kimberly asked, "So how're things going? Do you like London? How's Kat?"

Tommy blinked a few times. So many emotions, so much complexity. So not sure what to say. "I… yeah, I mean, it's a nice city, and we're so close to the rest of Europe we can do interesting weekends every two months or so, just see something new. And Kat… well, what can I say? She's a professional dancer; it's what she'd always wanted."

Though Tommy wore a smile, he spoke with a rather nuanced tone that suggested all was not roses. Kimberly could tell that he wasn't entirely at ease but she didn't want to ask for information he might not want to divulge.

Tommy, however, wanted to say something to someone. He hadn't talked about his loneliness to anyone, not even Jason. Katherine knew, but they never really spoke about it, and if she tried to bring it up he'd always stop her, for fear of making her feel guilty.

"Sometimes I wonder how much longer we can keep up this place," Tommy admitted. "I've got a steady Karate teaching gig, but we're not saving all that much money with the salaries around here, especially with the cost of living in London. And it's kind of hard sometimes… like this weekend, Kat had to go away to Austria and I had to supervise a belt test yesterday all day, then I had one extra class this afternoon that I went in for. Since she started doing professional dancing she's been occupied a lot of nights and weekends and so it's gotten harder for us to go out with her classmates and colleagues… and mine are both married with children." He sighed. "So… we don't really get out as much as we'd like together—or at all."

Kimberly nodded. "I know what you mean. My last year of high school, when I first… met Brendan…" Boy, was this awkward. "I was bouncing around in that gymnastics center like never before. I made a couple really good friends and we hung out a lot—actually, we still do—but that was most of our lives. Then after… I met Brendan and we started dating, I'd have to put in maximum non-school, non-gymnastics time to make it work. It got better after graduation, but still sometimes I feel like we never get to relax, veg all that much… He's really sweet. I think this weekend I'm just learning a lot about him and his culture that I never really knew existed, even though… for a Europe getaway we haven't really had any time alone together except on the planes, and then we sleep." She smiled sadly.

_Make it work._ Just hearing those words brought back painful memories for Tommy. So she'd been willing to make it work for Brendan… but not for him. _Quit it_, he told himself. _It's over. It doesn't matter. You've moved on now…_

This seemed like a good time to change subjects. "So, uh… speaking of gymnastics," said Tommy, "what do you think is next?"

_Oh, my gosh. Texas_, thought Kimberly. She cleared her throat. "Well, actually, it's kind of exciting… see, right after the Pan Global games, I went to see Coach Schmidt, and he told me Larissa Rustakov had been there at the games and that she'd really liked my performance."

"Larissa Rustakov." Tommy searched around mentally for a moment before shaking his head. "No, I don't know her."

"Oh, my gosh. Tommy, before there was Nadia Comeninci, there was Larissa Rustakov. She got six medals in three different Olympic games for the Soviet Union and then moved to the U.S. from Kiev just last year—she works for the National Team Center over in Texas."

"Seriously? Wow, Kim, that's incredible!"

"I know! And when I get back I'm flying to Texas to meet with them to see about signing on and training to go to Sydney next year." Kimberly smiled as she spoke, but the tone of her voice, considering the nature of the news, was somewhat subdued and almost wistful.

Tommy wasn't sure what to make of that. In the old days he would have expected Kimberly to be completely giddy, practically skipping around. "So you're excited?"

Still smiling, Kimberly shrugged. "I guess." Her eyes wandered elsewhere.

Tommy's gaze tried to follow hers. "You… you're going to go, though, aren't you? I mean… if you can?"

Kimberly took a deep breath. "The thing is, I… I haven't had a lot of time to think about it and I haven't even discussed it with Brendan all that much; we left for Europe almost right after I found out and we've just been running around seeing people and doing different things…" She sighed.

"You'd… you think you'd stay in Florida for him?"

Kimberly shrugged. "I think… well, I guess that's part of it, but it's more like… when I went to Florida I was still in high school and so I was still at the age where you can kind of carve out a life, and so I've kind of built one up. But if I went to Texas I'd pretty much be doing just gymnastics, no other classes or anything… I'd be alone and then afterwards I'm not sure where I'd go. My dad's not in Angel Grove anymore. I could go back with my grandparents to Florida but everything would change. I could go off to college somewhere; I have about two and a half years of classes left but I'd be twenty-one already—twenty-five, even, if I kept going until 2004." She paused. "I mean, I know it's a really good opportunity, but… what would it do for the rest of my life to give up the next five years like that? Coach said maybe a scholarship to a better school but…" She grimaced. "I just don't see myself at Harvard."

Tommy was nonplussed. He almost wanted to tell her about his own situation, how he'd had to choose between racing and Katherine, but he was so downtrodden about the whole mess and he was afraid of discouraging her.

He was also afraid that it would be construed as regret on his part. He didn't want to be thinking that—and he certainly didn't want anyone else to think he regretted marrying Katherine.

He thought maybe he should say, _Talk to Brendan: you can make something work._ But Kimberly hadn't mentioned Brendan all that much, and Tommy wasn't sure yet whether her boyfriend was in fact her central point of concern.

Plus, much as Tommy may not have wanted to believe that he was unhappy in his present circumstances, he didn't want to risk giving advice that might have similar fallout in someone else's life.

Finally, regardless of his marital status, Tommy frankly didn't feel up to giving Kimberly advice on trying to salvage a relationship with the man she had dumped him for. He had tried so hard to forget—they hadn't even invited Kimberly to their wedding on the double pretext that it was a small wedding (which was true) and that neither Tommy nor Katherine had really talked to her at all since the letter—but something inside kept prying at him: _You still don't understand. You've never understood. You must understand. You must defer any semblance of normalcy until you can understand._

And yet he knew so much time had passed, that was unreasonable. He couldn't bear to ask.

Kimberly was chuckling a little. "Kind of wish someone would just teleport me off to one or the other place and say, 'You have been chosen. This is your mission.'"

Tommy laughed and got up, starting to collect the plates.

"Tommy, no! Please, let me!" Kimberly began clearing off the casseroles.

"Kim, no, you're a guest!" Tommy protested. But his former teammate was far more efficient at this than he, and she started whisking everything into the kitchen and running the sink.

Whistling along to the vaguely familiar _Sleeping Beauty_ tune now emanating from the living room, Kimberly began scrubbing the dishes until she felt powerful hands grip her forearms and nearly cause her to drop the porcelain bowl she was working on.

"Hey!" Tommy hissed into her ear. "Put it down."

"Tommy, let go," she said, but she was actually surprised at how amused she was. Tommy had done that once before, when she'd cooked a sumptuous lunch for the two of them at his house back on Easter Monday 1995 and he wouldn't let her do the dishes.

That was the week after they'd all gotten back from Australia. Katherine hadn't been among them.

_Oh, yeah… and just a couple of days earlier we got sent back in time by the Green Ranger clone!_

_And then two weeks later we had that fight with… the Student Body President elections for the next school year!_

Suddenly a flood of old memories filled Kimberly's mind. Memories of Angel Grove. Memories of a life so radically different from the one she led in Florida, but still so very full and exciting—and on some level, perennially significant if not for her own person then for the world beyond her in a way that her life now was not and could not be.

And this time, she just let them flow unrestricted.

"I'll let you go…" began Tommy, "… if you obey my house rule, no guests in the kitchen!" He was tall enough to stare down at her from above and behind and give a goofy grin."

Kimberly rolled her eyes. "All right," she sighed, putting everything back down and accompanying Tommy to the black leather sofa in the reception room.

Sitting there with Tommy, smiling together, the memories just kept filling in and filling in. Though they were many thousands of miles away from where they had last seen each other, Kimberly felt as though she were living a totally different life from the one she had been living just this morning, pulled into a different setting. A very familiar one. And one that was, culturally and personally, very much her own.

She tried to relate all these memories back to that last remark she had made before Tommy had started clearing the table: _"Kind of wish someone would just teleport me off…"_

_Zordon!_

Her heart became suddenly heavy. Jason and Trini had told her about Zordon's death last December, just a couple of weeks after it had happened. She remembered crying only briefly, feeling a sort of sadness of a sort that she couldn't seem to make herself prolong into mourning of more fitting length. She had just been so far away from everything and everyone for too long to reconnect.

But now she was beginning to reconnect.

"Kim?" Tommy pierced into her thoughts. "What's wrong?"

"I was just… thinking about Zordon," she whispered. Her breaths came very deeply as she struggled not to burst into sobs.

Tommy hesitated to put a comforting hand to her shoulder, but slowly he did, for surely it was the right and natural thing to comfort a comrade in the circumstances of a fallen leader.

Indeed it was, if that was all the gesture was meant to accomplish. But to allow the tenderness to stay and take hold only constituted yet another mistake.

"I know Kim," said Tommy, fighting himself to hold back tears. "We were here in England when it happened. Adam still talked to the new Rangers we'd left behind two years ago; I found out from him. It… when he told me…" Tommy's sadness was quickly morphing into anger.

Kimberly sensed it. "Tommy, don't," she begged.

"It's just not RIGHT!" Tommy shouted, clenching his fists. His body was tremoring. "That Red Ranger… Andros—oh, man, the day I see Angel Grove again he'd better have high-tailed his alien ass _far_, far away from that city and not left a forwarding address!"

"Tommy!" Kimberly heard her voice crack. Without thinking she started to rub her ex-boyfriend's back. "Tommy, what if you'd still been the Red Ranger there? What would—"

"Keep fighting!" Tommy growled. "You can't do what he did. I don't care what someone tells you to do: you can't kill an innocent man to save anyone."

"Zordon's—Tommy, he was more than just a man."

"So much the worse!" A tear fell from Tommy's cheek.

"Tommy, the way Jason told it, it might not have been the breaking of the tube itself, but that once Zordon was exposed he just gave out all his energy to conclude the fight… that's not murder; it's not suicide even—I—I don't think, if he didn't want to die for death's sake…" She wanted desperately to reassure Tommy but also to reassure herself, and so she was trying to pull together some sort of hypothetical scenario that might pass the test for non-suicidal self sacrifice in her old catechism.

That was something that Brendan would do pretty well naturally, but Kimberly, not having attended religion classes or read any spiritual books in over twelve years, did not find it so easy a task.

Tommy's breaths were slowing. "I just… maybe it had to happen, but for it to happen like _that_…" He swallowed. "I think… I think the hardest thing was the reminder that a part of me, a part of that old life that I'd left behind was now just… gone."

Kimberly was well familiar with the old adage that you couldn't go home again but never in her life had she really understood what it meant.

Was this it now? She had never really wanted to back to Angel Grove, maybe afraid of the changes she'd see. Indeed, it had changed a bit when she had been there just briefly back in 1997—but that little adventure had been so overwhelmingly "back in the game" that she had scarcely noticed the difference.

But what neither Kimberly nor Tommy understood there, then, that evening, was that not only can you not go back home again, but also, sometimes, you must not attempt to salvage things from home for closure.

In this case, of course, that meant closure on the end of the Power Team for the both of them, at any rate certainly the Power Team as they knew it—Zordon's Power Team. And when the key to salvage for this closure happened also to be the key for the closure on a long, promising but ultimately doomed romantic love, it was all the more pressing to take guard.

Alas, everything that had happened to them since they had left each other seemed to be culminating here, tonight, in the mix of powerful, shared emotions: sadness, loneliness, nervousness, wistfulness and above all the longing for closure.

Kimberly and Tommy looked into each other's eyes and then clung together in a tight embrace. And as she sat there in Tommy's strong arms, the soft melody of the Waltz floating from the stereo filled Kimberly's head with the more recent lyrics composed to it:

_I know you; I walked with you once upon a dream  
>I know you, the gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam<br>And I know it's true: that visions are seldom all they seem…_

And the childhood memory activated endorphins to sooth and temper Kimberly's mood, so that when she pulled back from Tommy to look once more into his eyes, she could perceive nothing else.

So, too, could Tommy perceive nothing more than the euphoria of sweet comfort that sat before him.

A moment later, their tongues penetrated each other's lips, commencing one last mistake to crown the evening.

**TO BE CONTINUED…**


	4. Satan Is Coming

_**Disclaimer: **_Bedazzled_ and the relevant characters are owned by 20__th__ Century Fox (I believe)._

_**A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget  
><strong>_Part III: Satan Is Coming  
><strong>by MegaSilver<strong>

They just lay there awkwardly, neither one daring to speak. Kimberly was a few inches away from Tommy. A moment ago he'd been holding her. Then she'd backed away suddenly. He reached hesitantly outward for her shoulder but she flinched back. He got the message. Neither was quite sure what to do now.

Kimberly was struck with the consciousness that what they had done had been wrong just as quickly as she had brushed off that obvious fact just before they had done it.

Tommy, for his part, mentally searched for some sort of justification, or at least, some sort of sympathetic mitigation logic that would soften his—and Kimberly's—culpability for this sin. He searched and failed, but like a stubborn adolescent, kept searching.

Kimberly wondered if she could put the guilt out of her mind, at least for a few more minutes—just to be a good guest. "Tommy?" she said, nearly whispering. "Say something."

Tommy opened his mouth. "I…" was all that came out.

Kimberly understood. There were just no words to say. Not as long as they were going to lay there together in bed, he a married man and she an unmarried woman.

A man and a woman. Not the boy and the girl they had once been.

And as a man and a woman, they'd have to come to terms here and now with their actions.

So Kimberly threw back those beautiful linens that covered her—_Katherine's linens. My friends' linens. I gave it up on my friends' linens with a married man. I wronged my friends in their own home, in their own bed… in their bedsheets_—and began pulling on her clothing, quickly as she could. But to her it felt as though it took ages to pull on each article.

"Kim?" Tommy started to push back the sheets, but before he could get his feet on the floor, Kimberly quickly turned around, wide-eyed.

"No!" she cried. "Tommy… stay there, please. Just…" It was extremely rude, trying to tell a host what to do in his own house, but she wasn't thinking about that now. All she was thinking of was getting out of here.

_Just like a whore. I came in like a whore, I banged like a whore and I'm leaving like a whore._

Kimberly felt that delicious dinner churn around in her stomach.

_Because I _am_ a whore._

No—surely it's not that one mistake and you qualify as a "whore," no?

_I did it. On my friends' linens._

Kimberly hadn't expected it to go so fast, and as we all know, things go even faster when we are avoiding something that we know we ought to do. For example: avoiding coming to terms with the conviction that it is wrong, on many levels, to sleep with someone else's spouse.

_Yes, I am a whore._

Kimberly finished putting her shoes on and grabbed her purse. She started for the door, not even looking at Tommy, but once she got there she stopped, turned around, and gazed upon him with sad eyes.

_Say something. Don't leave like a whore. Not like a total whore, at least._

Say what? That they oughtn't see each other again on this trip—or, for that matter, ever again? That she admitted she had been the one to end it and that now she knew that ending it had been the right thing to do?

Kimberly felt even sicker, and she thought she would throw up if she tried to say that.

"Kim?" Tommy whispered. "Can't we just—"

"I'm so sorry, Tommy," was all she could manage, and that, barely audibly. Immediately she took off for the front door.

"Kimberly!" she heard Tommy call after her as she dashed through that door. She heard him pound up against the door but she didn't look back to see if he'd run through.

Kimberly got her high heel caught only once running down the stairwell—not bad for running as off-based and out of focus as she was running, but certainly sub-par for an elite-level gymnast with impeccable balance and agility.

_Just like a whore. Just leave like the whore that I am._

The time not to leave like a whore would have been before all this had happened. Not to leave like a whore would have meant not to come in like a whore. Not to bang like a whore.

_It's too late. I did everything wrong._

Reaching the bottom of the stairwell and not at all concentrated on where she was going, Kimberly ran right into the woman just entering at the ground level, knocking her against the wall.

Quickly she tried to regain her composure and apologized profusely: "Oh, my gosh, are you okay? I'm so sorry! I—" She stopped when she saw the woman come to and start to look back at her. _Oh, no._

"Kimberly?" spoke a familiar voice. "What are you doing here?"

The woman she had run into was Katherine.

At once, Kimberly forgot not to be flustered. "I—I'm on hol-holida…"

Katherine looked puzzled. "Were you… upstairs visiting Tommy?"

"I-I…" Kimberly made one last attempt to pull it together and think about how to manage the situation.

There was no managing this. There was no honorable explanation. There was no way to make this look like something it wasn't.

Actually, there probably was—there usually was—but in these conditions Kimberly was not up to trying any sort of cover, mostly because she could not even begin to think about what she would say to cover everything and to keep Katherine downstairs sufficiently long for Tommy to have cleaned up.

Kimberly took a hard swallow. "I'm sorry. I've got to go!" she exclaimed. Quickly, she began to dart out of the stairwell.

"Kimberly? _Kimberly!_"

But by the second call, Kimberly was already halfway up the block. It was twilight, raindrops were falling at a respectable pace and she was already half-soaked. "_Taxi!_" she cried after a cab, holding out her hand. One pulled up a lot faster than she would have expected given the weather, and she immediately thrust herself inside. "Upper Wimple Street in Paddington," she instructed.

"Right-o, dearie," came a masculine Scottish voice from the right side of the front seats.

Kimberly's breaths were coming quickly, and her stomach just kept turning and turning. She would have loved to be able to open the window and get rid of that dinner, just as she couldn't get rid of her memory of everything that had happened that evening.

She had left badly; she knew that much. She had left even more confusion than she had left with her last letter to Tommy. She had been short, rude and completely out of control around Katherine.

_Well, I never thought Tommy would forget that Katherine was coming home tonight and not tomorrow night! I never thought about how I would deal with an emergency situation after cheating on my boyfriend with a married man!_

Actually, she had never thought about cheating, let alone cheating with a married man. Never thought about the act itself, nor what to do if she were tempted.

And now, poor Tommy would catch hell upstairs… and she would catch nothing.

Kimberly was so upset, so mad, so frustrated and so scared that she couldn't even cry. She just wiped a bit of the rain moisture out of her face and stared into the rain outside.

There was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do except keep away from Tommy—and indeed, from anything resembling such a situation as being alone with someone else's husband in a place with a comfortable bed not far.

_Katherine… Tommy…_

Keep away from Tommy. Keep away from Tommy, who had saved her life under four years ago.

Keep away from Katherine. Keep away from Katherine, who had saved her life again just over three weeks afterwards. Katherine, whom she'd wronged so badly.

_Tommy wronged her, too._

That knowledge did little to relieve the guilt, or to make her not want to see Tommy just one last time, one last time for closure, to say the things she should have said…

… and hadn't wanted to say, and wouldn't want to say the next time, either.

She tried to put Tommy and Katherine out of her mind. For a moment, she almost succeeded… until she began thinking about what had happened to herself.

_I gave it up to a married man._

She'd always been so… clean.

_And look at me now!_

Though she let out no sobs, tears began flowing.

_Where did I go wrong?_

When they had started kissing, certainly. But surely she had gone wrong before that. Should she have told him no, she didn't want to hear that music? Should she have told him no, she wouldn't be coming over for dinner?

What would it have taken not to end up here, now, in this situation?

_Should I have gone back to Florida while Brendan visited his friends in London?_

_Should I have not broken up with Tommy in the first place?_

_Should I have never left Angel Grove?_

Not all the thoughts were rational. Few were, in her situation. And scarcer still were rational responses.

* * *

><p>Tommy, perspiring heavily, was about to pound through the front door—anything to make sure Kim was okay—until suddenly he became conscious of his own nudity. Frantically he scrambled back into the bedroom and reached into the closet for his lounge robe.<p>

Not there.

Just as frantically, he began to scrounge around all the clothes for the robe. He had a mission.

But after two solid minutes of foraging, he'd found nothing.

_Aww, man! I must've left it at the Laundromat last Wednesday!_

Forgetting. That was what he was good at. So flustered had he been that he had even forgot he might search instead for some clothes when the robe hadn't turned up immediately. Tommy debated going for his clothes and running downstairs, but Kimberly was surely out of reach by now.

Or maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was convinced he just didn't care. But she had come to him so willingly. He hadn't even made a move until she had given the sign she wanted it.

At that moment Tommy's eye crossed the oval-shaped painting standing on the dresser. It was a classical-photorealist painting of Tommy and Katherine on their wedding day, adapted from an Olan Mills portrait.

_I can't blame it on Kim!_

_And if I care about Kimberly… can I care about Katherine anymore?_

Tommy's head was a mess as he sat back down, distraught, on the place where he had broken those wedding vows just this last hour.

Just an hour ago it had been as though he were still back in high school. Still a Power Ranger. Still madly in love with his teammate Kimberly Ann Hart.

He hadn't so much as glanced at that wedding portrait the whole time. He hadn't even thought really about his new life since… since right before it had happened.

And why not? Why had he blocked it all out? From loneliness? From vengefulness?

He couldn't even begin to fathom. He, the leader of the Power Rangers, so thoroughly self-disgraced. He shut his eyes for a moment and tried to block it all out.

_No._

That evening just wouldn't disappear from his mind. He'd hurt Kimberly. He'd betrayed Katherine. How could he just make himself live out married life and act as though nothing had happen?

As it turned out, however, he wouldn't have that option.

* * *

><p>"Tommy?" Katherine called cautiously as she stepped into the apartment. On her right, the stereo was turned on but there was nothing playing; someone must have put in a disc and it must have ended by now. The sofa looked normal, except for a few pillows strung around. It was getting darker and she could barely see over the couch onto the dining table, but there were definitely a bottle—how full she could not tell—of wine and two empty wine glasses sitting there. Behind that was the kitchen and there appeared to be dirty dishes in the sink, but Katherine couldn't tell for sure.<p>

It had been ten seconds since she had called for her husband the first time, but she was sure he must be there. Otherwise, there was absolutely no logical reason as to why Kimberly would have been in the building.

Katherine was trying not to think about what the explanation would be. The logical one in any other circumstance seemed unthinkable in these ones.

Carefully she made her way over to the bedroom door, which was still cracked open. Taking a deep breath, she pushed it further open and saw Tommy, sitting on the bed, sheets partially wrapped around his otherwise exposed body. He looked tense, almost frightened—in a way she had never seen him before.

Slowly he looked his wife in the eye. "Katherine—"

All of the feeling seemed to leave Katherine's body at once. Never had she imagined something like this could happen. Never could she have been prepared for the shock. But there was only one logical conclusion, but she would do her best to give him one last out. "Tommy, what on Earth happened?" she asked, shaking her head. Then she changed her mind and turned her back on him. "No, don't tell me; I'm not interested."

But then she changed her mind again. She had to know how this would be explained. So she turned to face him again. "No, _do_ tell me! I _am_!"

"Kat, I… I wish I could say everything were all right. I… don't know what to say."

He hadn't taken the out. He wouldn't lie to her… at least, she hadn't thought so. She would have done everything to believe him if he had in this instance. But he hadn't.

Now he appeared to budge slightly.

"Don't… you _dare_ get up to greet me," Katherine warned in a hushed voice, in a near whisper. "You didn't even have time to scramble for your clothes just now; don't even think of pretending things are normal. Did you do this on purpose? Right before I got home, to humiliate me?"

"No, Kat, I promise the timing wasn't that! I just…" Tommy stopped himself there. She could tell he was struggling to at least keep his eyes in direct contact with hers.

Katherine nodded. "You just forgot I was coming home _today_; you thought it'd be tomorrow, right? One last day to go relive the past, right? You forget _everything_, _right_? Did you forget _I_ was your wife and not Kimberly? Right, I saw her run out downstairs! Did you forget you were _married_? Did you forget Kim broke up with you nearly _three years ago_?"

She shook her head. "It wasn't enough, was it?" Her breaths came harder and faster with each passing second. "It wasn't enough time, three years." She gulped. "Do you love her?"

"Kat…"

"Do you love her?"

"Katherine, I… I love _you_," Tommy stammered.

"That's not what I asked you!" Katherine screamed. "Oh, Tommy, are you serious? You just shagged your ex three minutes before I, your wife, walked in and now you dare tell me you love me?" Katherine hadn't managed to cry yet. She couldn't even think straight. "What…?

"No, you're not like that," she said, looking askance and blinking furiously. "Or _are_ you? Did you do this when you were still in Angel Grove and I was here? Do I really know you? Tommy, _answer me_!"

"I didn't plan this!" Tommy protested furiously, his face by now wet with perspiration. "I never did this before; I never thought I—"

"You did it just now!" screamed Katherine. "That's what we're talking about."

"But… you said—"

"Oh, Tommy, just… don't even _try_ getting technical with me; I can't even think straight!" The tears had begun to flow. "How long had it been going on? How long were you thinking you could keep this up? _Do you love her?_"

* * *

><p>Tommy couldn't answer. How could he? Here he was, completely split in his emotions, one wrong against another. If he said no, it would affirm his cruelty to Kimberly. If he said yes, it would affirm his cruelty to Katherine.<p>

_What do I want?_

Tommy tried to tell himself he wanted Katherine and only Katherine, but his mind just wouldn't let him.

Then, he dared wonder how it would be if he wanted Kimberly and only Kimberly, but that wouldn't fly, either.

_Both? Neither?_

He just couldn't muster up a response to any of those questions that would be at once honest and worthy of the dignity of the Red Ranger.

His dignity. His integrity.

All gone. Just like that. And for what?

_To hurt Kimberly. To hurt Katherine._

Tommy felt a wretched feeling burn through his heart, a feeling he'd felt only twice in his life: once when Rita's spell had been broken, once when Goldar had released him from Zedd's control after he'd handed over the Sword of Power. The feeling had been more pronounced that second time.

It was absolutely devastating right now.

* * *

><p>Katherine quickly turned her head to face Tommy. Not to hear a response pained her, but the longer she waited the more she dreaded the truth. "No, don't tell me. Not now. I have too much on my mind." Immediately she marched into the closet, emptied her suitcase and began throwing fresh clothes into it as she sobbed.<p>

About a minute later she felt a hand to her shoulder and she slapped it before whisking around to stare at its possessor. "Don't touch me!" she screamed.

Tommy had pulled on jeans and a t-shirt. "Kat—"

"Just leave me alone and let me sort this out!" Katherine cried. Having haphazardly re-packed for a number of days she didn't even know, she replaced her toilette bag in the larger bag, zipped this latter shut and began marching toward the front door.

She barely heard her husband cry out, "Katherine, no!" Not that it made a difference.

But just before she got to the door, her pride kicked in.

_This is _my_ home. This is my husband. I don't care how mad I am and how much I hate to be here, I'm not weak; I'm not going to go down this easily!_

Katherine began to cry for real. She threw her suitcase across the room and it hit a magazine table, from which a small porcelain vase fell on the floor and broke. It wasn't anything particularly special to her or to Tommy, but the sheer spectacle was dramatic enough.

Sobbing, Katherine marched over to the couch, lay across it, placed both of the pillows up to her head, pulled the blanket on top over herself and turned onto her side, her front facing the back of the couch. Now she could sob in private—as private as anything could be in a one-bedroom apartment with her husband.

She felt Tommy had come over to stand above the sofa, but she made no attempt to meet his gaze.

"Katherine," he began.

"Just go away. I don't want to talk."

"Kat, we _need_ to—"

"Just leave me alone; I'm tired and I want sleep."

And she certainly did not want Tommy, of all people, telling her what 'they' needed right now.

* * *

><p>"Kat?" Tommy whispered. He got no response.<p>

Suddenly he realized that then and there he would have to make a decision. He would have to accept his guilt for having hurt another, and being unable to repair it. He would have to sacrifice his dignity and make that decision, reject the other one here and now… however brash, however cold and insensitive it made him look.

_I choose my wife, he told himself._ "Kat, I love you."

"Tommy…" was all he heard in reply.

"Katherine?"

"Do you love her?"

That brash, insensitive _no_ just wouldn't escape Tommy's lips.

_I have to make it escape._

And there was only one way to do so.

With a sense of duty, Tommy grabbed the bottle and glasses from off the dining table and poured the remainder of the wine down the kitchen sink. Then he plugged the drain, poured in a ton of citrus cleaner and began filling the basin with hot water. While he waited for them to soak thoroughly, he marched into the bedroom and snatched up the linens and pillowcases from the bed. From the bathroom he fetched a metal bucket, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a set of matches. He headed out to the small courtyard-side balcony outside the bedroom, stuffed the sheets into the bucket and began to uncap the alcohol.

_I can't._

Tommy fell back on his bottom, leaning up against the half-opened window.

_Kimberly._

He had done it, too. He'd played his part and now he was just going to burn the evidence as though Kimberly were just some ordinary harlot who'd sucked him in mercilessly?

_Katherine._

But he'd made his choice. The right choice. Holding his breath, Tommy thrust open the bottle of alcohol and poured it over the sheets. Then he held a match to the tinderbox, but his hand began shaking. He couldn't strike.

_I'm a coward._

And if he wouldn't be a coward he'd be an asshole.

Tommy couldn't deal with this right now. He just couldn't. There was no morally credible way to do so. He had to leave.

_And go where?_

The only place he wanted to go was back, back before any of this had ever happened. But how far back did he want to go?

Back to dinner that night?

Back before he'd decided to walk home through the park?

Back to Angel Grove?

Back before… the letter, even? _No, don't think about that!_

He couldn't help it. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

The distant memories of Goldar's inaccessible Dark Dimension could have nothing on the sense of hopelessly impenetrable peril engulfing him now.

* * *

><p>"Kim!" exclaimed Brendan as his girlfriend entered the apartment, just a bit damp. It was nearly midnight. "I was beginning to worry. What happened? Are you all right? Where were you?"<p>

Too many questions. Overload. Just like everything these past few days. "I…" Kimberly panted. "I found… I ran into… I ran into some old friends, actually. I'd… forgot they were here." She bit her lip. "We had dinner. It got kind of late." She felt herself shivering just a little. "Umm… I'm gonna grab a shower before bed."

"It's okay," said Brendan. "C'mere, you can sleep in tomorrow. Take your time; we'll go out when you're ready. Just the two of us all day."

_Great. Spend the whole day with my boyfriend I cheated on—without any dilution of guilt._

It could have been worse: she might have had to spend the day after this sort of sin with the woman she'd wronged.

* * *

><p>"Don't you like it?" Brendan asked Kimberly, referring to the chicken Kiev that sat before her. They were lunching in the famous tavern across the street from the British Museum, and Kimberly was picking at her food with the pace of a slug.<p>

"Yeah, it's—okay," Kimberly answered. Actually, it wasn't bad, despite the widespread popular notions she'd picked up on about Londonian cuisine. Of course, after last night, her stomach serotonin was far from the optimal level to make her want to spend all that much time in the presence of food.

"You know, Kim, I was thinking… after the Museum, how 'bout a nice stroll through Regent's Park?"

_Right next to the Olivers' place! _Even the suggestion was way too much. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom," Kimberly said.

Once there, Kimberly washed her hands, wet down her face and stared in the mirror.

_Get it together_, she told herself. _Mind over matter. You can eat. You can keep going. Just find a way not to go up through the park._

Just then she saw in the mirror a pretty brunette woman in a tight red dress and Prada shoes exiting one of the johns. Kimberly quickly moved away from the sink to allow the woman to pass. "Oh, excuse me."

"No, darling," said the woman in a sophisticated South English accent as she washed her hands, "you've no need to excuse yourself to me after what you've been through."

_What?_ Kimberly tried to play it cool. "What I've been through?"

The woman began drying her hand with a paper towel. She stared into the mirror, fixating her gaze on the reflection of Kimberly's eyes. "I won't play games with you. I know about Tommy and Katherine."

Kimberly's heart leapt. "But how—"

"And _you_ ought to know that you are in mortal danger." Gracefully, the woman whirled around to face Kimberly. "Katherine knows, Kimberly. She's become angry. Enraged, even. And she's become angry very quickly. Now she sees you as a threat. She'll stop at nothing to make sure there's no chance you ever come across her husband again."

A little voice inside Kimberly told her that perhaps that was a little bit fishy: Katherine, not under a spell, a vengeful person? But that voice of reason, already compromised by her wilful suppression of it the previous night, was quickly drowned out by her fear and survival instinct. "How—how do you know this? How do you know me? How do you know Katherine and Tommy?"

"There's no time for that," the woman insisted. "I want to help you protect yourself.

"Now, listen carefully. You can't leave London until Thursday. Brendan will be suspicious. In the meantime you've got to dodge Katherine; she'll be looking for you. Tommy finishes his classes at eight o'clock tonight, and tomorrow night, and she'll be anticipating you anywhere between the central East End and their house above Regent's. Your safest bet is to stick as close to the dockside warehouses as possible starting at about six PM… and to take a taxi back to your friend's flat, but not before nine.

"But just in case," the woman added, pulling a small green jewellery box out from her purse, "you really ought to keep this with you." As she opened the box slowly, she said, "I mentioned Katherine would stop at nothing. And by that I mean that if she does find you, you'll never be a match for her without this."

Kimberly didn't say anything. She just stared in awe at the flat, round object resting on the soft cloth of the box's interior: solid gold, glowing pink, engraved with the fresh imprint of an extinct avian reptile.

"Now do you believe I want to help you?" the woman said.

* * *

><p>Over at a West End dance studio about four hours later, a tall blonde ballerina was exiting, relieved to be done with the day's work. Katherine had been completely shaky all day, totally unable to focus. And while normally she was very self-conscious about what she put into her body, tonight, she was definitely treating herself to a few drinks at the trendy bar across the street.<p>

_The coward_, she thought as she crawled onto the barstool.

_He couldn't say it. He couldn't say he didn't love her. He couldn't bring himself burn the sheets. And then he'd dare stay the night in the apartment!_

Katherine clenched her fists, gritted her teeth and tried not to wail out loud. She felt so lost, so helpless. There had been a time when, in such a situation, her natural instinct would have been to cry for Tommy's help.

Not now, she wouldn't. Or couldn't. Or… shoudn't?

Everything she'd thought she knew, everything she'd thought she could count on, seemed to have suddenly vanished.

No. Not vanished. Not crumbled, even. It was more akin to a shattered glass that was kept all together, but with visible cracks running every which way. A simple gust of wind might well suffice to bring it down.

Midway through a second strong and fruity cocktail, clutching her forehead as she slouched in her bar stool—a rare act of terrible posture for a professional dancer—and scarcely feeling any more relaxed or any less distraught than she had when she had walked in, Katherine scarcely noticed as a beautiful, chic brunette in red came up to stand close to her on her left. "May I ask what's wrong?" the woman offered.

Continuing to stare into her cocktail without so much as glancing at her would-be consolatrix, Katherine thoughtlessly murmured, "It's my husband."

"I should have suspected as much," said the woman, pulling up a bar stool and seating herself.

Katherine looked into the woman's eyes and noticed that, where she might have expected an inquisitive expression, she saw instead a knowing gaze. Knowing, as though the woman had known even before asking exactly what was wrong.

The gaze seemed to say, _This is serious business we're into._

**TO BE CONTINUED…**


	5. The Corruption of the Pink

_**A Euro-Trip I'll Never Forget  
><strong>_Part IV: The Corruption of the Pink  
><strong>by MegaSilver<strong>

"Interesting choice!" exclaimed Brendan as he and Kimberly exited the Museum of London Docklands around 5:55 PM on Tuesday. "Never thought you'd be interested in commerce history."

Kimberly chuckled and shrugged. "Yeah, well, you know…" she sighed, a bit anxiously. "Just something a little different."

Brendan moved in front of Kimberly and stopped, looking down into her eyes. "Kim, what on Earth is wrong? You've been all jittery and flighty since yesterday evening!"

Kimberly's heart leapt a beat. "I-I'm fine," she lied, unable to look Brendan in the eye as she spoke.

Brendan followed her eyes with his to get contact back. "Did something happen with your friends the other night, did it?"

Kimberly inhaled deeply and swallowed a lump in her throat. She couldn't bring herself to answer.

"It did, huh?"

Kimberly took a quick glance at Brendan's gaze and saw it was sympathetic rather than judgmental. That he saw her as the victim and not the perpetrator of whatever had happened.

Knowing that only made her feel even more ashamed about the whole ordeal. She turned her head away once again.

"Did you know them a long time?"

_Great. Nosy questions._

Kimberly swallowed once more and, without turning to face Brendan, explained: "It was Tommy and Katherine. You know, Tommy. They're—they got married." Brendan knew who Tommy was—though he wasn't quite aware of the depth of their former relationship—, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Brendan was slightly uncomfortable with that but seemingly reassured. Probably he was under the impression that the married couple had both been there with Kimberly, as his next question made clear:

"And you had dinner with them and it went bad?"

Kimberly hung her head. She couldn't bear to lie and she hated letting Brendan think an untruth even when she hadn't said anything false. "It was just complicated. I mean, Tommy and I… it's over. I know that. That's not the question." Kimberly cringed a bit. _More deception._ "But all those memories drudged up right at that moment… it just felt weird and it's like I can't be friends with them anymore. I really wish I hadn't gone out Monday night."

"Aww, Kim," cooed Brendan, putting a hand to his girlfriend's shoulder. "Look, it's over now. I've had to let friends go before, you know," he said, "if they're not right for you where you are in life, but… you don't ever feel you have to stay someplace you don't want to be, now, do you?"

_Like in that stupid flat of Darren's?_ Kimberly immediately wanted to slap herself for thinking such a thing, for wanting to blame this on Brendan. She'd just been slightly uncomfortable at first going in there. It wasn't as though Brendan, Darren and Roger related to one other in a way that was all that different from the way her male Power teammates had. It was just that the 'heavy' buddying she hadn't really seen in several years set against the week's various cultural shocks had thrown her off.

Sleeping last night at the place, however, had been _really_ uncomfortable, though now for the specific reason that she was had cheated on her boyfriend in the same city in which she was profiting from her his network for lodging.

Kimberly's thoughts drifted to the warning that lady had given her just a few hours earlier. As terrifying as it should have been, she was grateful to have something else to concentrate on—and to have possession of her Power Coin. In fact, that was about all she had thought about most of the afternoon. It had certainly helped to keep the chicken Kiev down.

"Hmm?" Brendan gazed directly into Kimberly' eyes.

"Sorry?" Kimberly blinked a few times and snapped out of her trance.

"You want to stay around here? Or get going?"

"Umm… let's just walk around here for a bit, huh? Maybe up a bit, then east, closer to the Thames? Work up an appetite?"

Of course Kimberly had calculated that move, but for an entirely different reason than that which she let on.

* * *

><p>"<em>Kim<em>."

"Katherine," breathed Kimberly, seeming shocked.

Katherine wasn't shocked. She had been warned this might happen. She had been doubtful that it would happen. She was somewhat distressed that it had happened. But now that it had she did feel almost relieved. Now there was no thinking. Just acting.

Now, in that low-visible square surrounded by several warehouses, the two former Pink Rangers stood face-to-face. That much was clear. Something else needed to be made clear.

"Don't you dare try anything, Kim!" Katherine warned.

"Brendan, get back!" Kimberly called to the dark-haired young man standing behind her.

"Wha—" Brendan began, obviously confused.

"I said, STAY BACK!" Kimberly cried before turning her attention to Katherine. "I know how to defend myself, Kat!"

Katherine's eyes went wide. Was… the other part to the story true as well? Then she'd better get ready… "And so do I!" she insisted.

Kimberly's own eyes went wide. She was clearly uncomfortable but she seemed to quickly regain her composure.

And as Katherine dreaded might happen, Kimberly began to assume a very familiar, straight-laced posture: legs together, right arm down and right hand in a fist, left elbow bent slightly forward.

_The lady was right!_

Now there was only one thing to do. Immediately in reaction, Katherine stood up straight, snapped her legs together and threw her two fists downward.

"It's Morphin' Time!" both young women called at once.

**TO BE CONTINUED…**


End file.
